August 7, 2010

  • SHOCK ART AND ODD BEAUTY

    I hate "shock art: -- that is -- art that is an affront to the soul,the stuff that violates one's sense of peace and dignity Life has enough affronts without adding one more to its plethora and calling it "art." 
    But in reality -- what I am hating is the part that does not resonate with my spirit.  I hate Jackson Pollack, but I love photography of urban decay.  I guess what resonates with me there is the sense of the passage of time -- the inference of what went on before in the things that remain behind.  The trashed out, decaying buildings give me a sense of the eternal, and the ephemeral at the same time.  Who knew, when those buildings were filled with activity, that they would come to such an ugly and wretched demise?

    Ironically, I make "ugly art" -- horrible face mugs and jugs -- and I love doing it.  I guess its a humorous way of confronting and taming my own demons of rage and grief.  Like trolls turned to stone at the sun's first rays, these poor monsters will never devour another soul.  They are hapless victims, caught in clay, immortalized in mason stain, and forever frozen in the fires of Cone 10 Hell.

    http://corazondedios.deviantart.com/gallery/#FACE-MUGS

    In their very ugliness,there is an inferred irony that beauty is temporal and age erodes it with its own graceful strokes.

    age

    in lines

    a network never ceasing

    seams of sorrow

    sewn in softly

    by an unseen hand

    (written when I was 17)

     

    Perhaps I will make some aging faces also.  Art can reflect the ugliness of the world around us and give it a gaussian edge that imbues it with its own ragged beauty. Ugliness has its own odd beauty.

    It's funny -- some people here may love Jackson Pollack -- but I consider his stuff "trash art" -- although I know he invested his heart and soul in creating it.  Perhaps he, too, was digesting his own demons in that huge shapeless volume of spattered paint.  Still, they were HIS demons, and I don't have to love how he decided to decimate them! I'll decimate my own demons in my own way!