The Ivory Tower of Irony

Last summer my family and I visited a high profile United States art museum. Which museum you might ask?  I will not name names here or disclose locations; my point is not to point fingers, but to relate my experience. This trip was a good day, a gorgeous day, an eye-opening day. This particular museum was organized, in a basic sense, with two main categories; historic/traditional art and modern/post-modern art. These were housed in different buildings. As one would expect the traditional art was in the “traditional” building, and the modern art in the modern building. We started our tour on the historic side.

During our tour of the historic side, I was completely blown away. Room after room I was completely astounded by the superb talent. Talent that could even surpass a genre I didn’t care for or knew nothing about. Exquisitely detailed painting, exquisitely expressive painting with no detail. Sculpture that captured a posture so well it became more human than human. A truly inspiring experience.

We moved on to the modern side, my anticipation high. To say I ended up disappointed is an understatement. Disturbed might be a better word for it. Most of the art was dismally untalented, trite, boring, or a transparent attempt to shock. It seems as if the main goal was who could out-irony who. I am no art historian, and I fully recognize that even a minimum understanding of art history can dramatically increase your understanding and appreciation of an artwork, or period, or movement. However, most people are not art historians either, so I feel I view art like most other people.  I want to make it clear that I am not advocating a return to “traditional” art over “modern” art. I love modern art, and see beautiful and meaningful examples of it daily, via the internet. No, I am still trying to sort this out, but I think what was disappointing and disturbing was that the so-called Art Establishment chose (for the most part) to display the drivel. Why? Do elite educations know better? Is the Establishment defining Art as that which shocks, and not that which might enhance your life? Is irony the enhancement my life needs? Speculation abounds, and I would love to hear your comments. What are we to make of this?

For me, I also came away with a vague sense of hope. I saw what the Art Establishment advocates, and I see that the rest of the world is moving on anyway; creating art that is beautiful, well crafted and meaningful, whether it is in a museum or not. I know where I would rather be. Moving on and keep on doing what is in my heart to do. I like that.

Is Our Life Purpose to Love?

What is the meaning of life? This is an often asked question, with generally vague or meaningless answers. Some people take a religious stance, some take the “no meaning” perspective, some say the question itself is baseless. No matter, here is my short take on the subject.

 We (living beings with consciousness) are the way the universe experiences itself. We are a self-aware part of consciousness that allows for the experience of "reality" itself. Why are there realities,  if not to experience them? This does not imply a static situation, rather a system of evolving "reality", individual and collective, based on the quality of the experience and our contribution to the experience. Are these experiences just for the joy of it? Perhaps not entirely.  If you accept that meaning and purpose are intertwined, then, what is the purpose of experience?

The school of thought that makes the most sense to me goes something like this: Super-consciousness, or God, or Universal Life Force, or metaphor of your choice; has a goal of increasing or evolving a higher quality consciousness. The way to do this is to set-up a situation, an experiment, throw sub-sets of itself into the mix as "experiencers", and see what the outcome is.  So how is “higher quality consciousness" measured? I sense an entire post on this subject, however, in a word….Love. Turns out that love is the most efficient way to achieve improvement. Now, if you accept that we are a sub-set of _______ (insert your belief system), then we have some input into the experience and a contribution to the improvement of love.

There are likely billions of these reality experiments happening at the same time. Certainly on a local scale, my reality is much different than yours, and on a regional scale the American reality is much different than the Chinese reality. But, I don’t think we can really discount possible alternative cosmic and universal realities as well. We really can only sense a very, very small set of the information available, so to reject other possibilities seems short-sighted, ha-ha-ha. All of this sound a little New Agey? Probably, but I know I feel most alive, aware, and purposeful, when I am intensely present with all my senses in the experience.

What are your thoughts or beliefs?

Why do we wait until death to celebrate life?

As I was thinking about the message I was trying to convey with my art, terms that kept coming up were something like “life celebration”, or “celebrating life”. So I did the natural thing, plugged these terms into Google and see what the world had to say. The vast majority of the top hits that came back had to do with funerals, funeral services and similar. Of course we should honor and celebrate life when somebody passes. But we don't have to wait until death to celebrate life.