Artéwõrldé
December 4, 2005 Damian Sarno
www.damiansarno.com
My Dear Damian,
Please forgive my delay in responding to your critique of my artistic approach to my work, an approach similar to that enjoyed by many frustrated artists - art for the sake of Art. I have given a great deal of thought to your comments, hence this letter may be somewhat prolix. In the process I shall hopefully clarify my views for your edification, since I fear you may have misunderstood me.
In my last letter I expressed my admiration for the skill exhibited in your painted faces, and suggested that you desist from making faces for awhile and make ass instead. And I cited the poem by my father, lauding Jennifer's perfect ass, a perfection agreed upon by all who had the pleasure of taking a position behind her in Luigi's Manhattan jazz dance class.
You greeted me in gentlemanly fashion when I arrived at your studio shortly after you received my letter. Your intellectual skills were immediately apparent although wrapped in humility. You mentioned that you were once given to sharp criticism yourself; that being unprofitable, you took up modesty instead. Even so, I detected the glint of a blade beneath your amiable demeanor. And I, to suit the occasion, assumed the role of humble student to exalted master; feigning Socratic ignorance, I posed a few questions on matters of great artistic import, which you in turn generously answered.
We discussed the Shackian method of art-colony management, which I described as imperialistic but too loosely departmentalized to be a genuinely fascistic or organic corporate structure, the likes to which certain Romantically inclined German poets were once exceedingly disposed. Like much popular contemporary art today, Art Center/South Florida's colonial departments are disconcertingly disconnected but for the ideology that each artist must remain consistent within his confined department; that is, given the middling palate of the masses, he must consistently produce a certain contemporary class of things that might sell, a class once exhibited in the main gallery under the rubric, objects of virtue. That phrase has been variously defined over the years; for example:
1749 Fielding: "They... may be called men of wisdom and vertú (take heed you do not read virtue)."
1871 Smiles: "The virtues or valour of the ancient Romans has characteristically degenerated into virtu, or a taste for knickknacks."
1830 Cunningham: "This country at that period... exported swarms of men with the malady of virtu upon them."
1825 T. Hook: "Soon they were doomed to withdraw their eyes from the innumerable bits of virtú which surrounded them."
1815 Scott: "The manufacture of some decoration, some piece of virtú, some elegant trifle."
1858 D. Costello: "Pictures, crockery, gimcracks of all kinds - what is generally known as virtú.
2004 Shack Gallery, Art Center/South Florida: "Historically, objects of virtue have been defined as finely crafted items for which utility and artistry are equally important. In this exhibition featuring works by artcenter's artists-in-residence, the objects reveal a virtue of vision, as individual as the artists' themselves." (sic)
By the way, Damian, I visited every exhibit at Art Center/South Florida's Shack Gallery over a period of one year, and I must say that I really enjoyed The Twenty-Third Annual Museum Education Program's Student Art Exhibition. Although the children had heard from their teachers that "there is nothing right or wrong about art", they did the right thing, and were true to their hearts to the best of their ability, hearts not yet ruined by commercial contemporary art education. How refreshing that rejuvenation was!
I had already noticed on my first visit, in the autumn of 2004, that the Art Center/South Florida colony had a face department or two, an abstract field department, a spiral department, and so on. Obviously it is the concept that counts, no matter how incoherent it might be or impertinent to content - to which the concept often has no correspondence besides the hablahblah-publicity. Indeed, Herculean efforts have been made by contemporary artists to sever substance from form (figure) - one Art Center/South Florida artist swears she has rid shape of line!
Whatever the conceptual device might be, deviations and experiments within the departments are naturally frowned upon when monetary success is at hand. That is not to say that the standard face and spiral fare might not be cautiously changed to some other standard. Successful spirals, for instance, might be replaced by drips. But if the drips are deemed too risky, the dripper might be dropped.
Such an approach to art consumption accords with the old dictum of the restaurant business: "Inconsistency is the cardinal sin of the restaurant business." That is, if the food is good. If people like a dish, why change it? Why fix something unbroken? But when sales lag, the owner might replace the peanuts on the bar with cheap beer-wholesaler snacks, redecorate the place, try another menu, change chefs, and proclaim that the flagging business is under new management, often to no avail.
Of course the modern art business differs from the restaurant business. Few chefs, no matter how fine their art cooking might be, proposed to take up restaurant politics and radically reform or overthrow the restaurant establishment. But early modern art reflected and sometimes led radical political reform. The reform went too far, leading to the rise of anarchic anti-art fiends and the destruction of principles both good and bad. The white squares and the like resulted not in the freedom intended once the slate was cleared, but in "democratic" tyranny.
Today, someone who professes historical principles, someone who dares to criticize "contemporary" art for whatever reason, and who would advocate a renascence, are, ironically and hypocritically, called censors and fascists, and are shouted down by soi disant "contemporary" artists who want to be the only contemporary artists on the face of the earth. Of course the newly rich and bulging-belly bourgeois amass profits all the while by stooping to the masses accordingly; that is only to be expected, for it is the nature of the beast - there are several ways to fleece sheep.
Early modern artists, albeit impoverished, were often given precedence over poets and were admired as the true intellectuals and prophets of their time. Indeed, when poor artists entered the bohemian cafe, writers and musicians stood up and bowed in sincere obeisance. Early modern art was more or less an aristocratic protest which retained some of the traditional concern with skill and sublimity and disdain for popular opinion - the opinion of a few peers sufficed.
Alas, however, the artists soon cut of their noses to spite their faces. Post-modern popular art, or 'Contemporary Art' (as if current artistic production is monolithic) boils art down to I don't know what. Not that I object to the process nor to the objects of virtue which I get a kick out of. After all, if anything goes, the field is wide open for the resurrection of fine art by creative souls - if only they were not shouted down by their fellow artists! Of course we do see some evidence of a continuous renascence in the form of a few fine pieces framed by clutter. So rather than despise and protest the contemporary clutter as "anti-art" or against Art, perhaps we should simply call it Fred instead of Art.
Mind you, Damian, that I do not deny that a great deal of money is to be had by virtue of "Contemporary Art" nor do I say there is anything inherently wrong with awarding some poor slob who has no drawing skills or sense of beauty with fame and fortune, thus converting him from slob to snob. In fact, I suggest that the imperial approach at Art Center/South Florida is extremely unwise in the contemporary art business sense, for the present cannot be canned and sold except by souless, apolitical machines - apolitical because they have no control over the distribution of power. After all, popular post-modernism rendered the classic concept of consistency, still obediently practiced by many of our peers, obsolete. Again, big gains may be had from the confusion of creative-destruction's perpetual innovation and corresponding advertising designed to cultivate insatiable desire and wean people from one dish to another, which becomes ever more easy to do when their palate has been desensitized, when the plethora of choices debases their taste, as it were, and they no longer have the slightest idea of what they really want and will eat anything for momentary energy.
Although you seem to disagree, it appears to me that the Shackian colonial methodology shackles the artists at the colony; although they are no longer allowed to actually sleep in their studios, they are shackled to the virtual bedposts of their respective stalls in a virtual fast-art court, thus arresting their creativity and stiffling their modern revolutionary role, as if they were the emperor's cooks instead of free artists.
What's more, the colony lacks a communal spirit, as each member is induced to forswear politics and to look out for number one, who is not really the individual artist, but is rather the political dictator at the top of the mini-empire, someone who insists that politics and honest criticism should stay out of his business. Wherefore I have heard the very antithesis to creative art professed by artists at Art Center/South Florida: "Artists should stay out of politics."
Wherefore I, in my capacity as an absolutely painterly painter, a masterly painter without a painting, wrote a few provocative letters to artists whose work I appreciate the most, in hopes that kicking a few of them in the shin might provoke them to resurrect themselves from the commercial grave they are digging for themselves at Lincoln Road's fast-art court. It was not my distaste for the vulgar commercial form of contemporary art that moved me to provocation: it was the love for art and the repressed artists at Art Center/South Florida that moved me to provoke a few of my favorite artists. For instance, yourself, to make ass instead of making faces; the abstract field painter, to paint Irigary's labia or two lips meeting intead of a black cracks on indigo; the spiral painter, to paint the death spiral of young Kennedy's last flight.
And you differed with my assessment when I visited your studio. Of course you might smile smugly and shake your head over the bad accidents that might pass for art in the contemporary art business, yet you believe concessions must be made for the sake of business, and you think the right concessions are being made at Art Center/South Florida.
Wherefore you keep your most personally rewarding creations - your truths - in the back, and display what sells best out front, mostly faces. During my visit I noticed something different for a change, something most remarkable, a biblical figure out front. I did not recognize the subject of that awesome painting by name. You said you had learned to keep his name to yourself due to the religious prejudices of the audience. I was reminded of the old saw, that one should not bring up politics and religion in polite conversation; that is, if one wants to win friends and influence people.
As for my approach to writing, you remarked that you were hesitant to tell someone like me that he would not make it (thus making that very implication), because some fools occasionally make it. Well, I said, just be honest. All right, you said, I am just an insulting little man, a nobody, therefore nobody will care what I say, particularly my provocative assertions. First of all, one must conform and become somebody, then he can do what he wants to do.
But I must tell the truth, I responded, the way I see it, if I am to be true to my art, and if the truth is somehow insulting, then so be it. As for being a nobody, it was Nobody who drove the stake into the Cyclopean eye and freed the fictitious sheep. Further, I pointed out that I had not negatively criticized any particular production or artist at Art Center/South Florida, for, according to my red herring critical methodology, I consider other works as points of departure for the display of my own wares. Indeed, I had some difficulty understanding why I had been told that I should leave the premises whenever the director or the owner were about, as I in all my vanity figured they should be grateful for my presence, or at least consider me a member of the public who are invited, one who is genuinely interested in Art Center/South Florida.
Notice that the revolt I recommended in my provocative letters is within the revolution. Variety is not only the spice but is the essence of life as well; without it, the artist stagnates: his face becomes a death mask; his artistic spirit is demented; he loses his facility for creative living. Thus we have grotesqueries instead of galleries.
I have carefully considered your criticism and the advice coupled thereto - one must buckle under to succeed. Much of morality rests on a few platitudes variously adorned to appear original - the sin is in appearing to be just another cattle. I have given the very same advice to several artists over the years. For instance, I encountered one of the finest jazz singers in America, yet unknown. She had been a teenage prostitute and had managed to work her way through school and into a music college. She was a guitar-playing poet with the voice of an angel and a classically trained ear. She insisted on singing what I called long-haired or intellectual jazz, many of them her own compositions. I told her I could get her a recording contract if only she would sing popular music.
"Once you become somebody by singing what people like to hear, you can do your jazz."
"I am somebody already," she demurred, "and I will make them like my music."
Still, I almost got her a deal - she would have had it if she had not disappeared for so long between India and Thailand. She was true to herself. She wound up living in a remote village in Alaska - she is part Native American. She has no regrets. I don't blame her.
And I have no regrets for not following what may be good advice for you but rather bad advice for me, iven my eccentric view of success. Life is not what you have but what you make of it. Although I have no painting because I am an absolutely painterly painter, I have my artistic integrity.
As far as I am concerned, the consummate art is the composition of a spiritual flight, one that would rather not land on a compromise, say, in the form of a business transaction with an audience, or a partnership with society - as you suggested to me. I do not despise those who make such deals if they are so disposed by destiny or providence, fortune or fate; nor do I believe their settlement is better than my avoidance of settling down. It is just that my role is to rebel, if you will, hopefully in good humour, against imperialism, including economic imperialism; that is, the absolute economic determination and utter socialization of the individual.
I do not mean to say that I hate business. I am a good businessman when I apply myself to business ends. But there is a certain meanness and viciousness in much of business which I cannot tolerate. A help wanted ad appeared last Sunday: the employer is retarded or is foolish: he openly seeks someone who is suicidal by implication; that is, someone, as he puts it, "who is willing to work long hours in a high stress multitasking environment."
Now, then, you can see from my complaints that I have my sympathies with the "contemporary" or anarchic anti-art movement not to mention the Jewish and other revolts. I am careful not to make "anti-art" my enemy lest it make me. But canning and selling it is not my business.
My business is the mental business guided by the artistic spirit that revolts from production; the creative mind must have leisure to develop special interests, innate interests that do in fact coincide with the natural progress of humankind, a progress far beyond what any civilization may offer. Antagonism between the intellectual artist and the secular powers keeps the social order from stagnating and has been a key factor in every radical renascence of great note. Radical: a return to the very root of being original that the soul may be revived. It is not an anarchic, anti-historical return: it is a classic return to the ultimate authority, and in its freedom it is shaped by natural law.
And yes, Damian, the renascence needs funding. Anti-intellectual merchants who mistakenly believe that history is dead, that anything goes, that nothing is right or wrong with art, that the future is in their hands, might ponder on something Mo Ti once said about the ruling classes of Chi and Chu who "lost their empire and their lives because they would not employ their scholars."
If only more contemporary artists today would think more and at length on the history of life, from the first touch of the music of the spheres felt by the stardust infant in the darkness of the womb. My musically inclined poet will tell you that she would rather lose her sight than her hearing. The ear is nobler than the eye, for the eye must conform to its objects no matter how abstract they might be, in order to see them, otherwise nothingness; while the ear can listen to the voice of silence that causes the heart to leap for joy in the invisible light. Of only we were not so hard of hearing, we would see better and think as well.
Finally, I must say that I still believe that it would behoove you to make ass for awhile instead of faces. That is, I believe it would be good for all us if you would bring the stuff you've hidden in the back out front so we can see how you really feel. Now I recall that you said there is no ideal ass. I disagree. You might prefer the burnished buns of Brasil or a drooping derriere, yet the archetypical ass remains. I would entitle it the Golden Ass and present it as the Moon.
Best Regards,
David Arthur Walters
cc: file
The Merchant by Geoffrey Chaucer
There was a merchant with forked beard, and girt
In motley gown, and high on horse he sat,
Upon his head a Flemish beaver hat;
His boots were fastened rather elegantly.
He spoke his notions out right pompously,
Stressing the time when he had won, not lost.
He would the sea were held at any cost
Across from Middelburgh to Orwell town.
At money-changing he could make a crown.
This worthy man kept all his wits well set;
There was no one could say he was in debt,
So well he governed all his trade affairs
With bargains and with borrowings and with shares.
Indeed, he was a worthy man withal,
But, sooth to say, his name I can't recall.
Artéwõrldé
May 10, 2005 Aloha!
I happen to be an absolutely painterly painter; that is, a painter without a painting, hence I depend on painters for my paintings.
It has been my pleasure to review your Red Faces at Art Center/South Florida. You are certainly an excellent painter.
I love Art Center/South Florida, but sometimes I get bored with the respective consistencies of the artists who shack up with Mr. Shack. Wherefore I have visions from time to time, surreal visions, so to speak, of something consistent yet inconsistent at the same time. While viewing your Red Faces, a vision of Jennifer's Ass came to mind, slightly reddened to match, yet white enough protrude from the milieu. Jennifer's ass exists - or at least did exist. I become acquainted with it while studying with the Jazz Dance maestro, Luigi Facciuto, in Manhattan. So impressed was I and many of my fellow dancers with that ass, that my father, upon hearing of it, wrote the poem below.
'What Has God Wrought?'
Jennifer's Ass is so divine
A mortal man on viewing it
Might feel himself so blessed he can endure
Living in the city.
For he, commuting to and fro,
Always knows his ride
Takes him to see the Ass
Or from a fresh recollection
Of having seen it.
But now the Ass, alas,
Has moved to California.
Copyright 1995 R.B.C. Walters
Permission Granted
Damian, I think your Red Faces will pleased upon seeing Jennifer's Ass.
Yours,
David Arthur Walters
Artéwõrldé
December 4, 2005
Damian Sarno
www.damiansarno.com
My Dear Damian,
Please forgive my delay in responding to your critique of my artistic approach to my work, an approach similar to that enjoyed by many frustrated artists - art for the sake of Art. I have given a great deal of thought to your comments, hence this letter may be somewhat prolix. In the process I shall hopefully clarify my views for your edification, since I fear you may have misunderstood me.
In my last letter I expressed my admiration for the skill exhibited in your painted faces, and suggested that you desist from making faces for awhile and make ass instead. And I cited the poem by my father, lauding Jennifer's perfect ass, a perfection agreed upon by all who had the pleasure of taking a position behind her in Luigi's Manhattan jazz dance class.
You greeted me in gentlemanly fashion when I arrived at your studio shortly after you received my letter. Your intellectual skills were immediately apparent although wrapped in humility. You mentioned that you were once given to sharp criticism yourself; that being unprofitable, you took up modesty instead. Even so, I detected the glint of a blade beneath your amiable demeanor. And I, to suit the occasion, assumed the role of humble student to exalted master; feigning Socratic ignorance, I posed a few questions on matters of great artistic import, which you in turn generously answered.
We discussed the Shackian method of art-colony management, which I described as imperialistic but too loosely departmentalized to be a genuinely fascistic or organic corporate structure, the likes to which certain Romantically inclined German poets were once exceedingly disposed. Like much popular contemporary art today, Art Center/South Florida's colonial departments are disconcertingly disconnected but for the ideology that each artist must remain consistent within his confined department; that is, given the middling palate of the masses, he must consistently produce a certain contemporary class of things that might sell, a class once exhibited in the main gallery under the rubric, objects of virtue. That phrase has been variously defined over the years; for example:
1749 Fielding: "They... may be called men of wisdom and vertú (take heed you do not read virtue)."
1871 Smiles: "The virtues or valour of the ancient Romans has characteristically degenerated into virtu, or a taste for knickknacks."
1830 Cunningham: "This country at that period... exported swarms of men with the malady of virtu upon them."
1825 T. Hook: "Soon they were doomed to withdraw their eyes from the innumerable bits of virtú which surrounded them."
1815 Scott: "The manufacture of some decoration, some piece of virtú, some elegant trifle."
1858 D. Costello: "Pictures, crockery, gimcracks of all kinds - what is generally known as virtú.
2004 Shack Gallery, Art Center/South Florida: "Historically, objects of virtue have been defined as finely crafted items for which utility and artistry are equally important. In this exhibition featuring works by artcenter's artists-in-residence, the objects reveal a virtue of vision, as individual as the artists' themselves." (sic)
By the way, Damian, I visited every exhibit at Art Center/South Florida's Shack Gallery over a period of one year, and I must say that I really enjoyed The Twenty-Third Annual Museum Education Program's Student Art Exhibition. Although the children had heard from their teachers that "there is nothing right or wrong about art", they did the right thing, and were true to their hearts to the best of their ability, hearts not yet ruined by commercial contemporary art education. How refreshing that rejuvenation was!
I had already noticed on my first visit, in the autumn of 2004, that the Art Center/South Florida colony had a face department or two, an abstract field department, a spiral department, and so on. Obviously it is the concept that counts, no matter how incoherent it might be or impertinent to content - to which the concept often has no correspondence besides the hablahblah-publicity. Indeed, Herculean efforts have been made by contemporary artists to sever substance from form (figure) - one Art Center/South Florida artist swears she has rid shape of line!
Whatever the conceptual device might be, deviations and experiments within the departments are naturally frowned upon when monetary success is at hand. That is not to say that the standard face and spiral fare might not be cautiously changed to some other standard. Successful spirals, for instance, might be replaced by drips. But if the drips are deemed too risky, the dripper might be dropped.
Such an approach to art consumption accords with the old dictum of the restaurant business: "Inconsistency is the cardinal sin of the restaurant business." That is, if the food is good. If people like a dish, why change it? Why fix something unbroken? But when sales lag, the owner might replace the peanuts on the bar with cheap beer-wholesaler snacks, redecorate the place, try another menu, change chefs, and proclaim that the flagging business is under new management, often to no avail.
Of course the modern art business differs from the restaurant business. Few chefs, no matter how fine their art cooking might be, proposed to take up restaurant politics and radically reform or overthrow the restaurant establishment. But early modern art reflected and sometimes led radical political reform. The reform went too far, leading to the rise of anarchic anti-art fiends and the destruction of principles both good and bad. The white squares and the like resulted not in the freedom intended once the slate was cleared, but in "democratic" tyranny.
Today, someone who professes historical principles, someone who dares to criticize "contemporary" art for whatever reason, and who would advocate a renascence, are, ironically and hypocritically, called censors and fascists, and are shouted down by soi disant "contemporary" artists who want to be the only contemporary artists on the face of the earth. Of course the newly rich and bulging-belly bourgeois amass profits all the while by stooping to the masses accordingly; that is only to be expected, for it is the nature of the beast - there are several ways to fleece sheep.
Early modern artists, albeit impoverished, were often given precedence over poets and were admired as the true intellectuals and prophets of their time. Indeed, when poor artists entered the bohemian cafe, writers and musicians stood up and bowed in sincere obeisance. Early modern art was more or less an aristocratic protest which retained some of the traditional concern with skill and sublimity and disdain for popular opinion - the opinion of a few peers sufficed.
Alas, however, the artists soon cut of their noses to spite their faces. Post-modern popular art, or 'Contemporary Art' (as if current artistic production is monolithic) boils art down to I don't know what. Not that I object to the process nor to the objects of virtue which I get a kick out of. After all, if anything goes, the field is wide open for the resurrection of fine art by creative souls - if only they were not shouted down by their fellow artists! Of course we do see some evidence of a continuous renascence in the form of a few fine pieces framed by clutter. So rather than despise and protest the contemporary clutter as "anti-art" or against Art, perhaps we should simply call it Fred instead of Art.
Mind you, Damian, that I do not deny that a great deal of money is to be had by virtue of "Contemporary Art" nor do I say there is anything inherently wrong with awarding some poor slob who has no drawing skills or sense of beauty with fame and fortune, thus converting him from slob to snob. In fact, I suggest that the imperial approach at Art Center/South Florida is extremely unwise in the contemporary art business sense, for the present cannot be canned and sold except by souless, apolitical machines - apolitical because they have no control over the distribution of power. After all, popular post-modernism rendered the classic concept of consistency, still obediently practiced by many of our peers, obsolete. Again, big gains may be had from the confusion of creative-destruction's perpetual innovation and corresponding advertising designed to cultivate insatiable desire and wean people from one dish to another, which becomes ever more easy to do when their palate has been desensitized, when the plethora of choices debases their taste, as it were, and they no longer have the slightest idea of what they really want and will eat anything for momentary energy.
Although you seem to disagree, it appears to me that the Shackian colonial methodology shackles the artists at the colony; although they are no longer allowed to actually sleep in their studios, they are shackled to the virtual bedposts of their respective stalls in a virtual fast-art court, thus arresting their creativity and stiffling their modern revolutionary role, as if they were the emperor's cooks instead of free artists.
What's more, the colony lacks a communal spirit, as each member is induced to forswear politics and to look out for number one, who is not really the individual artist, but is rather the political dictator at the top of the mini-empire, someone who insists that politics and honest criticism should stay out of his business. Wherefore I have heard the very antithesis to creative art professed by artists at Art Center/South Florida: "Artists should stay out of politics."
Wherefore I, in my capacity as an absolutely painterly painter, a masterly painter without a painting, wrote a few provocative letters to artists whose work I appreciate the most, in hopes that kicking a few of them in the shin might provoke them to resurrect themselves from the commercial grave they are digging for themselves at Lincoln Road's fast-art court. It was not my distaste for the vulgar commercial form of contemporary art that moved me to provocation: it was the love for art and the repressed artists at Art Center/South Florida that moved me to provoke a few of my favorite artists. For instance, yourself, to make ass instead of making faces; the abstract field painter, to paint Irigary's labia or two lips meeting intead of a black cracks on indigo; the spiral painter, to paint the death spiral of young Kennedy's last flight.
And you differed with my assessment when I visited your studio. Of course you might smile smugly and shake your head over the bad accidents that might pass for art in the contemporary art business, yet you believe concessions must be made for the sake of business, and you think the right concessions are being made at Art Center/South Florida.
Wherefore you keep your most personally rewarding creations - your truths - in the back, and display what sells best out front, mostly faces. During my visit I noticed something different for a change, something most remarkable, a biblical figure out front. I did not recognize the subject of that awesome painting by name. You said you had learned to keep his name to yourself due to the religious prejudices of the audience. I was reminded of the old saw, that one should not bring up politics and religion in polite conversation; that is, if one wants to win friends and influence people.
As for my approach to writing, you remarked that you were hesitant to tell someone like me that he would not make it (thus making that very implication), because some fools occasionally make it. Well, I said, just be honest. All right, you said, I am just an insulting little man, a nobody, therefore nobody will care what I say, particularly my provocative assertions. First of all, one must conform and become somebody, then he can do what he wants to do.
But I must tell the truth, I responded, the way I see it, if I am to be true to my art, and if the truth is somehow insulting, then so be it. As for being a nobody, it was Nobody who drove the stake into the Cyclopean eye and freed the fictitious sheep. Further, I pointed out that I had not negatively criticized any particular production or artist at Art Center/South Florida, for, according to my red herring critical methodology, I consider other works as points of departure for the display of my own wares. Indeed, I had some difficulty understanding why I had been told that I should leave the premises whenever the director or the owner were about, as I in all my vanity figured they should be grateful for my presence, or at least consider me a member of the public who are invited, one who is genuinely interested in Art Center/South Florida.
Notice that the revolt I recommended in my provocative letters is within the revolution. Variety is not only the spice but is the essence of life as well; without it, the artist stagnates: his face becomes a death mask; his artistic spirit is demented; he loses his facility for creative living. Thus we have grotesqueries instead of galleries.
I have carefully considered your criticism and the advice coupled thereto - one must buckle under to succeed. Much of morality rests on a few platitudes variously adorned to appear original - the sin is in appearing to be just another cattle. I have given the very same advice to several artists over the years. For instance, I encountered one of the finest jazz singers in America, yet unknown. She had been a teenage prostitute and had managed to work her way through school and into a music college. She was a guitar-playing poet with the voice of an angel and a classically trained ear. She insisted on singing what I called long-haired or intellectual jazz, many of them her own compositions. I told her I could get her a recording contract if only she would sing popular music.
"Once you become somebody by singing what people like to hear, you can do your jazz."
"I am somebody already," she demurred, "and I will make them like my music."
Still, I almost got her a deal - she would have had it if she had not disappeared for so long between India and Thailand. She was true to herself. She wound up living in a remote village in Alaska - she is part Native American. She has no regrets. I don't blame her.
And I have no regrets for not following what may be good advice for you but rather bad advice for me, iven my eccentric view of success. Life is not what you have but what you make of it. Although I have no painting because I am an absolutely painterly painter, I have my artistic integrity.
As far as I am concerned, the consummate art is the composition of a spiritual flight, one that would rather not land on a compromise, say, in the form of a business transaction with an audience, or a partnership with society - as you suggested to me. I do not despise those who make such deals if they are so disposed by destiny or providence, fortune or fate; nor do I believe their settlement is better than my avoidance of settling down. It is just that my role is to rebel, if you will, hopefully in good humour, against imperialism, including economic imperialism; that is, the absolute economic determination and utter socialization of the individual.
I do not mean to say that I hate business. I am a good businessman when I apply myself to business ends. But there is a certain meanness and viciousness in much of business which I cannot tolerate. A help wanted ad appeared last Sunday: the employer is retarded or is foolish: he openly seeks someone who is suicidal by implication; that is, someone, as he puts it, "who is willing to work long hours in a high stress multitasking environment."
Now, then, you can see from my complaints that I have my sympathies with the "contemporary" or anarchic anti-art movement not to mention the Jewish and other revolts. I am careful not to make "anti-art" my enemy lest it make me. But canning and selling it is not my business.
My business is the mental business guided by the artistic spirit that revolts from production; the creative mind must have leisure to develop special interests, innate interests that do in fact coincide with the natural progress of humankind, a progress far beyond what any civilization may offer. Antagonism between the intellectual artist and the secular powers keeps the social order from stagnating and has been a key factor in every radical renascence of great note. Radical: a return to the very root of being original that the soul may be revived. It is not an anarchic, anti-historical return: it is a classic return to the ultimate authority, and in its freedom it is shaped by natural law.
And yes, Damian, the renascence needs funding. Anti-intellectual merchants who mistakenly believe that history is dead, that anything goes, that nothing is right or wrong with art, that the future is in their hands, might ponder on something Mo Ti once said about the ruling classes of Chi and Chu who "lost their empire and their lives because they would not employ their scholars."
If only more contemporary artists today would think more and at length on the history of life, from the first touch of the music of the spheres felt by the stardust infant in the darkness of the womb. My musically inclined poet will tell you that she would rather lose her sight than her hearing. The ear is nobler than the eye, for the eye must conform to its objects no matter how abstract they might be, in order to see them, otherwise nothingness; while the ear can listen to the voice of silence that causes the heart to leap for joy in the invisible light. Of only we were not so hard of hearing, we would see better and think as well.
Finally, I must say that I still believe that it would behoove you to make ass for awhile instead of faces. That is, I believe it would be good for all us if you would bring the stuff you've hidden in the back out front so we can see how you really feel. Now I recall that you said there is no ideal ass. I disagree. You might prefer the burnished buns of Brasil or a drooping derriere, yet the archetypical ass remains. I would entitle it the Golden Ass and present it as the Moon.
Best Regards,
David Arthur Walters
cc: file
The Merchant by Geoffrey Chaucer
There was a merchant with forked beard, and girt
In motley gown, and high on horse he sat,
Upon his head a Flemish beaver hat;
His boots were fastened rather elegantly.
He spoke his notions out right pompously,
Stressing the time when he had won, not lost.
He would the sea were held at any cost
Across from Middelburgh to Orwell town.
At money-changing he could make a crown.
This worthy man kept all his wits well set;
There was no one could say he was in debt,
So well he governed all his trade affairs
With bargains and with borrowings and with shares.
Indeed, he was a worthy man withal,
But, sooth to say, his name I can't recall.
May 10, 2005
I happen to be an absolutely painterly painter; that is, a painter without a painting, hence I depend on painters for my paintings.
It has been my pleasure to review your Red Faces at Art Center/South Florida. You are certainly an excellent painter.
I love Art Center/South Florida, but sometimes I get bored with the respective consistencies of the artists who shack up with Mr. Shack. Wherefore I have visions from time to time, surreal visions, so to speak, of something consistent yet inconsistent at the same time. While viewing your Red Faces, a vision of Jennifer's Ass came to mind, slightly reddened to match, yet white enough protrude from the milieu.
'What Has God Wrought?'
Jennifer's Ass is so divine
A mortal man on viewing it
Might feel himself so blessed he can endure
Living in the city.
For he, commuting to and fro,
Always knows his ride
Takes him to see the Ass
Or from a fresh recollection
Of having seen it.
But now the Ass, alas,
Has moved to California.
Copyright 1995 R.B.C. Walters
Permission Granted
Damian, I think your Red Faces will pleased upon seeing Jennifer's Ass.
Yours,
Artéwõrldé
Memorandamus
To: Bruce Tolman
At: www.brucetolman.com
From: David Arthur Walters
Re: Death Spiral
Aloha, Bruce.
As you may know, I am an absolutely painterly painter, a painter without a painting, hence I depend on other painters for the exhibition of concepts I receive from time to time by transcendental means - Diamond Lotus Radio. While viewing your paintings at Art Center/South Florida, the tragic death spiral of John F. Kennedy's night flight came to mind, along with a vision of one of Whistler's nocturnes - Ruskin accused him of throwing a pot of paint in the public's face - and then I remembered something Vincent Van Gogh said in a letter to Theo:
"It is perhaps not superfluous to point out that one of the most beautiful things this country's painters have done is to paint darkness which nevertheless has light in it."
Shortly after the latest Kennedy tragedy, I wrote the following entry in my Scrawlings from Limbo:
V. Then Came the Human Beings - remembering John F. Kennedy, Jr.
"Then came the human beings. They wanted to cling to something but found there was nothing to cling to."
(Albert Camus)
For that purpose, and with the enduring perseverance of the inventors of perpetual motion machines, I imagine the manufacture of an advanced kite, one with an invisible string and a trusty engine, a plane upon which I clamber for my Nite Flite through darkness over turbulent waters.
Absent the Sun, who would melt the wax affixing my wings and remake of me the featherless biped I once was, I would soar higher than Icarus ever aspired. Absent also the Moon, it now appears in the final analysis from my cockpit that the fundament itself is an illusion, no matter how firm it feels on the ground; hence I cling to the hope that the firmament is really firm, despite its apparent infirmity when I view it from the fundament.
Be all that word play as it may, and may Efficiency, the curse of modernity, be damned, I say the illusions so sedulously avoided are real beacons of that unavoidable fate against which every vessel, no matter how sturdy and crafty, is destined to crash on its last detour. In spite of that, I continue with my Nite Flite.
I understand that powerless planes descend in a peculiar spiral described as a "death spiral". As an absolutely painterly painter, I cannot quite envision the nature and impact of such a descent. Given your artistic interest in spirals, perchance you might provide a demonstration.
Artéwõrldé
Date: April 25, 2005
Memorandamus to: Claire Breukel, Art Center Director
From: David Arthur Walters
Re: Artécafé Bohemia
Aloha, Claire! As you may recall, I am an absolutely painterly painter, a painter without a painting. I plan on applying for space at Art Center/South Florida when I get my blank slides together – I have been very busy lately maintaining my status as a starving artist. Once I have been accepted, I shall proceed to revolutionize the artéwõrldé from the Center by transcendental means – Diamond Lotus Radio.
I have already received a few suggestions, during a dreamy séance late last night. My dream invoked the ghosts of Whistler, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, Cezanne, and Pisarro. Perhaps my vague sketch will make a favorable impression on you.
Whistler intimated that business politics is stifling innovation at the Center. Everything is much too consistent. What is needed, he said, is a pocket of bohemian atmosphere. Manet recommended that the Center establish a bohemian artécafé somewhere at the Center, a place where artists and authors could get down off their high horses and commune outside of their boxes. Degas objected to the term “commune” - he recommended that a private lounge be established for five or six artists - not to include Cezanne – but Degas was hissed down. Pisarro said Artécafé Bohemia should be open to the public and made especially inviting to artists and writers whose works have been recently refused and rejected by reputable galleries and publishers – rejected paintings, sculptures, chapbooks and the like would be sold on the cheap. Refreshments would be modestly priced if not dirt cheap. Models might pose at will, within the parameters of decency, for the benefit of sketch artists, poets, and gawkers.
What say you?
Artéwõrldé
April 24, 2005
Memorandamus To: Babette Hershberger
From: David Arthur Walters
Future Reference: Two Lips and a Stick
Aloha Babette!
Several publishers have asked to publish my effusions on your prize-winning Indigo Stripes, but I have declined to release them because the publishers are offering nothing but glory in return, and I know the value of my piece will rise in time. Furthermore, I want a photo of the work for submission.
As you may know from my previous missives and manifestoes: In addition to being a writer and a triple threat, I happen to be an absolutely painterly painter – a painter without a painting. As such, when I get my blank slides together, I shall apply for a vacant Kube at Art Center/South Florida, from whence I shall revolutionize the artéwõrldé by transcendental means – Diamond Lotus Radio.
I have already received a surreal suggestion that I believe you will be artistically interested in: a future painting, entitled Two Lips and a Stick. As you may know, I was recently discussing Dali’s lipstick advertisement with Darwin. While walking on the beach this morning, Two Lips and a Stick came to mind, de pronto!
Some time ago I studied the works of Luce Irigary, a social psychologist whose perspective is genetically inspired. She is not well known in this country, but she is highly regarded in communist and socialist circles France. She is not a feminist; nonetheless, she elaborated on the formal differences of the genitalia and objected to the cultural dominance of the One in contradistinction to the Two, or Other, which she views as more balanced because both sides of the story, as it were, are told at once with two lips.
I am enclosing a wordy little masterpiece of my own inspired by her root work. Of course it is far more explicit than would be Two Lips and a Stick if you painted it.
Phallus Worship by David Arthur Walters
http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/dragonpearl/blogs/phallic.html
Objects of Virtu
by David Arthur Walters
A Vindictive Prelude
Artécity publicist extraordinaire Dindy Yokel inspired me to visit artécitycard participating cultural center ArtCenter/South Florida Gallery on South Beach Florida's famed Lincoln Road. Ms. Yokel, responding to my article flattering Alessandro Ferretti's $100 million Artécity real estate development, recommended that I find some other topic than real estate and art to write about, since those subjects are already covered by qualified writers at the Miami Herald.
Ms. Yokel publicizes her reputation for integrity and loyalty to clients, and I understand that her advice carries considerable weight in the community. Ironically, she had previously recommended that I submit my work to a free sidewalk newspaper, the Miami Sunpost, a paper of considerable quality, if the orthodox standards of the established press are the criterion for judgment. I took her advice, but my articles and opinions about the possibility of living an ideal Artécity Life were rejected, perhaps because the Sunpost happens to be running full page advertisements of the project. Sunpost editors and publisher are well aware of my opinions about the gauche quality of some of the artépublicity, opinions which I had only expressed privately and directly to Mr. Ferretti, until Ms. Yokel made false written remarks about my character to the Herald.
As for submitting my work to the Herald, it had already been generally rejected without reading by Executive Editor, Tom Fiedler, who kindly advised me that the primary criterion for acceptance at the Herald is not the quality of writing, but "market needs" based on "ethnic and racial" factors, and, to some extent, the luck of the draw.
Wherefore my inspirational dissatisfaction moved me to get a better education about Miami's artéscene, particularly in respect to the hypéreality of artéstate. I would become better acquainted with the market needs of the community that they be better decorated and a higher profit turned by all persons concerned; in which case I might obtain the wherewithal to finance the purchase of a multi-million-dollar condominium on South Pointe as set forth in my recent mission statement, 'South Pointe or Bust!'
Artécolony
I approached artécitycard-participant ArtCenter with some trepidation given Ms. Yokel's advice that the artécity scene is already fully covered. I am starting with nothing, hence am in desperate circumstances. I certainly do not want to waste my time creating works that will be discarded as trash. But I might as well proceed anyway, since I do not seem to fit in anywhere in Miami, not even into selling newspapers for the Herald on a part-time, minimum-wage basis - I don't speak Spanish. Wherefore I approached ArtCenter with judgment suspended, despite good and sufficient reason to be biased if not prejudiced.
ArtCenter is located in Lincoln Mall at 800 Lincoln Road on South Miami Beach. It was established as a non-profit artist colony, in 1984, for the express purpose of contributing aesthetic quality to the community. The ArtCenter publicity credits the institution with upscaling the once-blighted and bohemian Lincoln Road Mall, into a shopping and recreation destination for the leisure class, now attracting an estimated 2.5 million visitors annually. A local resident said he liked the bohemian mall better than the hedonist mall it has become, but the bohemian mall was also a bankruptcy mall and had to go.
Everyone including members of the underclass are still welcome to walk into ArtCenter, observe the artists in action, chat with them, and buy something - the colony gets a percentage off the top. I toured the place and pressed my face up against the glass windows of the workshops.
If you like to make faces at big faces, visit the studios of Karim Ghidinelli and Damian Sarno. Making faces is not all they do, but they do that a lot at ArtCenter, apparently because of some silly rule called "being consistent," which has surely led to the rejection of innovative artists of the permanent revolution.
Luciana Abait's many underwater swimming-pool views are so consistently realistic that one can almost taste the chlorine, lending credence to Plato's view, that art is deception.
Bruce Tolman's uncluttered abstract paintings are colorful to say the least. I might put the golden-toned one in my South Pointe condo. On second thought, if he would not mind toning down the colors, I might commission him to fresco all the walls of my master bedroom.
Shirley Henderson is an excellent courtroom illustrator, but I did not care for the modern digressions now displayed. I don't know if she would bend her artistic conscience for $50,000, but I would really like to have some absurd paintings of the legal scene.
Tony Chimento is consistently real, but the smoke rising in the distance on one painting reminds me of myself watching a Kansas tornado when I was a kid, and not the consequence, perchance, of an Indian raid on my home.
Anthony Silva's signage is consistently spell-binding. I would certainly commission him to do all the signage for Artéwôrldé.
Those artists whom I have ignored should not feel slighted but should feel complimented by my ignorance. My dysfunction is not to make a career of ejaculating or barfing on art. Every ArtCenter artist already knows whose work is most worthy. I'm sure that most of them would admit to a hierarchy in all matters real and artificial, from mates to masterworks.
Of course I have my perverse preferences and counter-cultural prejudices. I don't care much for the consumer society of mass-produced disposables. Idealists used to complain that people had become too obsessed with the possession of material objects. I do not worship fetiches, yet I would love to have just a few beautiful, useful and durable objects. As for art, give me one work of fine art, give me a single Van Gogh, and I will invite my friends over to marvel at it. The rest is all clutter to me. Most exhibits I have seen constitute a few good things framed by clutter.
I think there is too much garbage, junk and trash in the world. And it's not because people crave the things in themselves. Consumers crave more life for themselves in the mindless consumption of things,. When artists reflect and elaborate that culture, I have no right to say, "Well, this is not fine art, this is just an artistic junk collection." As a matter of fact, it might be a fine re-creation of junk or innovative embodiment of demented, trashy thinking. However, when I do see an iconoclastic bull in that brittle china shop, preferably a fire-breathing bull-dragon blackened by anarchy, I am wont to celebrate. Alas, given the "market needs" of the political hierarchy, including the need to be consistently vulgar in order to turn a predictable profit, such a bull is highly unlikely to appear, except on those bohemian fringes disdained by the received civic leaders and their publicists, until their craving moves them to gentrify, revitalize, or upgrade yet another "blighted" bohemia.
After touring the ArtCenter workshops, I visited a small collection of objects, articles created by the art colony's members, exhibited in the Art/Center's gallery. The collection represented the philosophy of the curators; to wit: Artcenter Alumni, Edouard Duval-Carrié, and Isabel Block, ArtCenter's Director of Exhibitions and former curator of the Centas Fellows Collection at Florida International University's Frost Museum of Art.
On the whole, the exhibit was not a very persuasive sample of the virtues of the artists or the colony, although there was some good, truth and beauty evident.
Steven Gagnon's Mind if I smoke? a human skull sculpted with cigarettes, virtuously alluded to the link between smoking and death, but the presentation was not powerful enough, in my opinion, to cause nicotine addicts to swear off smoking. If I were a constructive critic, I would keep the skull and set my criticism beside it, in the form of a realistic sculpture of an ashtray fashioned from a blackened piece of diseased lung, with two or three cigarette butts snubbed out therein.
Vickie Pierre sculptures, for instance Ugly Little Dreams for Little Girls to Buy, are quite charming. I would not buy them for myself, but I would certainly purchase a few as gifts for friends, who would appreciate them very much.
The exhibit, running from November 27, 2004 - January 2, 2006, was entitled Objects of Virtue. I must say the collection was mistitled. Furthermore, the textual description publicizing the exhibit was clumsy, as if the persons who wrote it were not the sort of people who have time to sit around thinking and polishing words all day long, hence they are in want of a good publicist and copywriter if not a fine author. Let the reader consider the curators' description of Objects of Virtue:
"Historically, objects of virtue have been defined as finely crafted items for which utility and artistry are equally important. In this exhibition featuring works by artcenter's artists-in-residence, the objects reveal a virtue of vision, as individual as the artists' themselves." (sic)
An Excursus in American English
Facility in American English is not a cardinal virtue in Miami, where superior English is resented if not despised. That is, unless the speaker is fluent in Spanish as well; otherwise, he has less than half a chance of gainful employment, something many applicants have painfully noted before fleeing north. Bilingual excellence may help many bilingualists into good positions as interpreters and translators, and, in rare cases, if they cooperate to the fullest extent, into the highest offices in the land, regardless of their ethical virtues. Yet, generally speaking, the demotion of the nation's first language to the status of its second contributes to negligence in the first, hence to even worse postmodern English babbling in the incorporated towers of Babel.
I mean not to derogate the Spanish language. The most intelligent conversations in Miami are reputedly conducted in Spanish, some say by Cubans, whose love for higher education and pride in their own is in part due to the virtues of Fidel Castro's indoctrination program. By the way, Fidel Castro's old Columbian friend, Gabriel Marcia Marquez, is one of the greatest novelists in the world; the virtue of his work, when rightly translated into English, is unmatched by writers for whom English is the mother tongue.
Naturally the truthful expression of honest opinions on certain subjects is politically incorrect and is considered to be downright insulting, especially to reputable publicists such as my favorite model, Miami's Dindy Yokel, and their esteemed clients in the money, real estate, art, and political business - for instance the City of Miami Beach. Even constructive suggestions about living an ideal Artécity Life, made with virtuous intentions, are not welcome in Miami: Yokel implied in writing that my very existence as an honest outsider is insulting.
Today the emphasis is not on right but on might, not on ethical virtue but on force-feeding the gross market need for tokenry, trinketry, gadgetry, and hypetry; by virtue of which the masses are pacified, that the power elite may obtain the highest and most immediate compound growth in profits for conspicuous consumption of luxurious living in their compounds and resorts. To that extent the latinoamericanization of the United States serves to expand the underclass that it might better serve the interests of their betters. Thus does the disparity between rich and poor grow. The yawning gap shall, in due time, match the worst case of material injustice in the Western hemisphere, Latin America, whose poor and rich are fleeing north - the former for jobs, the latter to launder southern surpluses.
Miami, the most impoverished rich city in the United States, presently stands as an ambiguous model therefor, foretelling the miamizacion of the United States. Publicists proclaim Miami to be a "world-class" city now, finally in full accord with the neoliberal scheme of imperial globalism. And it is right on track. But its streets are not paved with gold; money does not grow from its palms; the desperately poor and insane can be seen sleeping at night in the doorways of its artécity cultural centers.
No doubt pernickety pedants will take exception to my grammar here, and superpatriots will naturally declare my thinking perverse; yet they might find enough truth in their madness to provide me with a loving editor and the benefit of a comfortable couch. In the interim, I return to the Art/Center publicity for Objects of Virtue.
"Historically, objects of virtue have been defined as finely crafted items for which utility and artistry are equally important. In this exhibition featuring works by artcenter's artists-in-residence, the objects reveal a virtue of vision, as individual as the artists' themselves." (sic)
Virtue is not Virtu or Vertu (also Virtú or Vertú)
The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, with the prodigious assistance of an American madman - he thought he was being pursued by vulgar Irishmen and therefore killed an innocent workman - among other voluntary readers among the public, drew a historical difference between virtue and virtu. Of course vir, 'man, manliness', is at the root of both terms, yet 'virtue' is generally used to signify power as a quality of persons or things, while virtu refers to a love for objects of fine art and not so fine curious, or to the objects themselves.
I believe the Art/Center curators, in the first place, chose the wrong English word to name the collection exhibited. The articles I saw with my own eyes were Objects of Virtu.
Art is usually intended to arouse a response, and its utility may be said to be just that, However, the "objects of virtue" displayed were not utilitarian objects in the usual sense. They impressed me as curious little articles of art, curious, if you will, something one might put on a stand, a table, the shelf, and the like. Still, it may behoove us to address the philosophical statement of the curators regardless of its applicability to the subject at hand. For example, if we take the statement literally, that the objects in question were crafted with an equality of artistry and utility in mind, we would usually assume, without viewing the objects, that none of the works exhibited are fine art.
Art extends beyond the merely technical aspects of production and the use to which an object might be put, hence "innovation" is a prerequisite of creative art. Generally speaking, the virtue of fine art is not the practical utility of a crafted instrument but rather its aesthetic value; for instance, the motive for the production of fine art is not to fashion an instrument, for instance, to make money, but to produce a beautiful article - not necessarily the pleasurable sort of beauty, but perchance the sublime beauty that might be found even in the portrayal of awful or horrible subjects that do not present any clear and present danger to the viewer. As for money as an instrument, John Ruskin once said, the best work is not done for money. Further, "Believe me, no good work in this world was ever done for money. A real painter will work for bread and water; and a bad painter will work badly, though you give him a palace to live in. "
That is not to say that a finely crafted instrument like King Arthur's sword, best known for its magical power or virtue, cannot be a work of fine art. Metaphorically speaking (we attribute 'manly' power to an object) the magic sword might be called a virtuous article of virtu. Likewise, we might declare an ancient Chinese sword to be obsolete as such, or not longer of great virtue as a finely crafted article of combat - it had a virtuous balance and was capable of cutting a man in half - yet is now an object of virtu to be hung on the wall. Ancient Chinese swords were, incidentally, also used as a medium for writing, which gives us cause to consider once again the relative virtues of pen and sword.
When the Art/City curators said the articles exhibited "reveal a virtue of vision", those among them who are not idolators and who do not think of things as fetishes did not mean to say that the articles have vision or can see; they might have better said that the collected articles of virtu represent or realize or embody the unique visions of the individual artists.
To better illustrate the difference of meaning between virtue and virtu, let us refer to a few quotes from the Oxford English Dictionary:
1749 Fielding: "They... may be called men of wisdom and vertú (take heed you do not read virtue)."
1871 Smiles: "The virtues or valour of the ancient Romans has characteristically degenerated into virtu, or a taste for knickknacks."
1830 Cunningham: "This country at that period... exported swarms of men with the malady of virtu upon them."
We recall that virtue, as a term analogous to the mysterious life force or virtue posited by physiologists was the name of a popular notion among romantically inclined liberal thinkers whose art of living answered to natural inclinations untempered by the moral conventions of their time. The spelling, virtu, was also used, yet the substitution of virtu for virtue is rarely to be used lest it confuse:
1934 Pound: "Or say where it had its birth, What its vertu and power."
1973 Times Literature Supplement: "The Pagan Vertú, the 'civic humanism' of Machiavelli, had become the proud Christian freedom of the Hugeunots."
We find this more customary historical usage, the first example being made in a Christian mood:
1825 T. Hook: "Soon they were doomed to withdraw their eyes from the innumerable bits of virtú which surrounded them."
1815 Scott: "The manufacture of some decoration, some piece of virtú, some elegant trifle."
1858 D. Costello: "Pictures, crockery, gimcracks of all kinds - what is generally known as virtú.
The Virtue of Criticism
The aesthetic value of an object of art is a personal judgment. That does not mean that the value is entirely arbitrary or subjective, for the person is, after all, a social being whose predispositions are tempered by social conventions. That is, the formal aesthetic value of art is largely determined by public criticism, by praise and blame. The artist conforms to some extent to recognized principles, of beauty and the like, or in rebellion would found her own school. In other words, art is determined by culture yet it in turn determines culture by expressing ideas which might otherwise remain unrealized.
Art criticism is itself an art. I am not an art critic, nor do I have to be one to say that I have found "professional" art criticism in Miami as lacking as Miami's professional journalism. Since art criticism advertises critical opinions, one might expect positive criticism at least to be artfully rendered. Criticism of any sort seems to be construed as an insult in Miami, no matter how constructive it might be rendered, even with all good intentions toward the cultural institutions involved, including the community itself.
Indeed, suggestions from outsiders in any field seem to be unwelcome in Miami, no matter how competent those outsiders might be, hence they they get a nice tan and depart, and are bid good riddance. In the long run, the result will be "pictures, crockery, gimcracks of all kinds - what is generally known as virtú." Those objects of virtu do not constitute the best publicity available to Miami.
Conclusion to this Screed
In fine, the objects of virtu exhibited at Art/Center South Florida displayed the virtues and vices of the community. The publicity for the exhibit was atrocious.
bravenet.com