01 MY PURPOSE: To Learn How to Like Art

SYNOPSIS. In which the author loses his faith in art and decides this is a good thing, even though it doesn’t feel like a good thing. In which the author makes a snide remark about Caravaggio and charity workers and young adult fiction. In which doubt is called a jerk and F. R. Leavis rescues him from such name-calling. Where Hope is also called a jerk. Where the purpose of this website is explained in simple English by the jerk. Where a goal is set down and a quest developed. Where museums become the playthings of the mind. Also, an invitation is offered to you.

LOSING FAITH IN ART

Three years ago I lost my faith in art. This is worse than losing a tooth. A back one. Not a front one, though. Losing a front tooth is a lot like losing your faith in art. You feel like you look a little dumb.

I suppose it's easy to do when all you’ve done is love art rather than like it. If you’ve ever lost faith in anything (a lover, a video game company, the later episodes of The Animaniacs) you know how depressing it can be. For most of the previous decade, I was an art evangelist without a church. I was like those poor college kids who stand in busy shopping districts trying desperately to get you to care about starving animals who deserve the right to get married. “Do you have a minute to hear about the poor state of the varnish on Carravagio’s Baptist?” Yeah, like them. I talked about art, wrote about art, looked at art, read about art, and made art. I took it all very seriously, which was probably Mistake Number One. Seriously the way people take Christmas seriously. I had no doubts with regards to art’s value and everybody knew it and prayed that I would just watch sports or something. I was like a lover of young adult fiction—it's totally the greatest thing ever written and you are stupid if you don't think so. It was my everything and no one could sway me away from it.

Except for me. I could sway me from loving it. I hadn’t expected that.

Yes, ma’am, I doubted.

DOUBT IS A JERK

Doubt is a wonderful thing. It’s so cute the way it sneaks up on you and says, “boo.” You don’t jump, but you appreciate the playful spirit of it. But it also sucks because doubt is a very effective medical leech. Leeches killed Washington. They suck blood. But presidenticide and blood-sucking notwithstanding, they still have value in hospitals today (we just prefer not to see them). When I began to doubt that art had any value whatsoever, this leech had babies all over my skin and I found myself doubting a whole lot of other things—particularly that I had any purpose any longer for doing anything that I loved. This was not good. I relied upon my passion to give Extra Special Meaning to my life. Yes, my daughter and wife gave my life meaning, but this was a different kind of meaning: the meaning of one’s individual existence in relation to humanity at large—which was silly, because I didn’t really believe in humanity. I eventually began to doubt that “meaning” even had any value. 

I was going downhill fast.

Recap: Lost faith in 1) Art 2) Doubt 3) Meaning. If I was a post-modern artist my life would be golden right...about...now.

Then I read F. R. Leavis. I had a fondness for Leavis from back in my unfinished grad school days. Leavis had the ability to write complicated, unreadable sentences that packed so much meaning into them that they burst upon the brain in bloody letters. His mind was strong, his beliefs were well-documented, and even if I disagreed with him, I couldn’t argue with him. He was dead. I picked him back up at the beginning of 2013 and found the hope I was looking for.

HOW TO LIKE ART: YOU AND ME

Last year I wrote a satirical book called How To Like Art and Profit By It. It is not a kind book. The writing of it coincided with the disintegration of my naive art-religion. But I still stand by the book as a guide for the weary. In a spirit of hope, though, I repurposed its title (“How To Like Art”) into this website, which was originally intended to sell the damn thing. [Buy it if you want to or steal it, but that isn’t really my goal any longer. That’s a lie. I’d love for you to buy my books after/during/before reading this website.]

My goal is to visibly, and with your help, learn to like art again. I want to recognize greatness in a concrete way—this isn’t necessarily an objective/subjective qualification either, though that plays a part. You see, for years I preached that one must “Engage Art” but I don’t think I ever really did that, nor did I really know what the heck I was talking about. So I intend to do so now as part of a personal quest to discover if art is really all it’s cracked up to be.

My quest is to visit a major museum in all fifty states over the next two years. My wife and my daughter will join me when they feel like it and I will write about my experiences. I will engage individual works of art and write my thoughts about them here on the website. There will be some discussion about Art and “reviews that aren’t reviews” of a bunch of things, all with the hope of keeping the conversation going and the brain stimulated.

My invitation to you is to help me create a conversation about art that will ultimately transform the way art is perceived in our fine country (or world). It’s good to aim high, right? This isn’t crowdsourced criticism (I’m not a critic), it is mutual engagement of the things that have value to us (or should have value, or shouldn’t have value—I’m open to all possibilities). There will be hurt feelings, a sense of camaraderie, and loud arguments. We will be polite, we will be rude, we will be at times hopeful and at times hopeless. But we will persevere. We will think about art and learn about how we fail in discussing art, engaging art, and sharing art. We will find ways to succeed. Who knows, perhaps this will be a time of rebirth not only for myself, but for many of us.

Thank you for coming. I hope you come back and join in. Emoticon! :)

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