The Quicksands of Business

Tate Modern Switch House Selfie - So Cool!

Tate Modern's new building, Switch House is the kind of new shiny thing that the kids will go for and Andrew Marr on telly the other night confirmed as much when he confirmed what we art-lovers already know, namely that Tate Modern was/is a very cool place for kids to hang out -  they love it! Selfie opportunities abound, along with the chance to hang out with lots of other cool kids because Art is cool and if they have time there are Art things littered around, some even hanging on the walls, but the coolest kind stands there looking a-ma-zing, like giant spiders, piles of junk, huge metal things and perhaps even interactive things. Everyone loves to interact with art...because it's better than just having to stare at it or worse still stare at something which isn't figurative because that takes some working out, some thought and perhaps even some background information or bloody historical context which, as you know, is a bit boring. Tate Modern and Switch House are cooler than clubbing...Art is cooler than clubbing and it's free! Mostly. Hurrah!

Xerox Copier, 1960 / Total Electric Home (detail)

...from Popular Science magazine, Jan 1960, to be precise - how could they have foreseen the popularity of the Xerox machine amongst fanzine punks 20 years later? We'd go to community places that had one and makes our little productions...ah, do you remember communities? Real ones? Where like-minded people used to gather as they made their statements to the world? Desktop afterwards...and Photoshop, which ruined everything, just like auto-tune technology...and...er...musos...because Yes are to blame for everything...ha-ha!

Total Electric Home (detail) RTomens, 2016

A digital artist speaks...

Works in progress...

Some People (Remix) - burn, baby, burn!

Some People (Remix), RTomens, 2016

.......burn, baby, burn! No, not L.A., -  disco inferno! Which is almost as bad, when you think about it. Not that The Trammps meant to revel in the idea of a literal disco inferno, of course....that would be terrible...nothing left but the charred remains of many platform shoes...

...the Some People remix idea came to me as I was cropping out a detail from the original with a view to showing it before changing my mind and cutting, then noticing how the 'Burn' button was appropriate considering the theme of black protest in the 60s. See, I don't just throw these things together...I throw 'em together with some consideration...

The Years...

Dedicated To America's Defense

The fine artists should have a fine mind, 'free of all passion,

ill-will and delusion.'

The fine artist need not sit cross-legged.'

- Ad Reinhardt, Art News, May 1957

Here's something I made last week as a break from the main project I'm working on. 

I am not deluded....

Dedicated To America's Defense, RTomens, 2016

digital collage: Baffling Mysteries x2

Why are the masses not concerned with art? Why does art remain the privilege of

certain educated sectors of the bourgeois class?

- Situationist International, 1964

.............why indeed...............or has Tate Modern (London) changed all that? "Look, a Damien Hirst exhibition!" 

                 if Mr & Mrs people now embrace art more than ever before is it only in terms of Tate Modern attendance figures & do they matter, really (half being tourists)? 

                                                                is it only in terms of what a sector of London's middle classes wish to be so as they educate their children in a form of indoctrination?

                                                                                                           is it all a bit Blair's Britain Pop YBA Oasis-at-Downing Street again?

                                                or are the proles actually using this portal (internet) to enlighten themselves regarding visual treats on offer by both contemporary artists & historical.............a revolution of the eyeballs? & even more revolutionary: are they themselves actually making art?!!!! more of them making art?

.................................................what the hell..................................................................................

I am no 'fine artist'

but I am working class

neither of which matters to you....................so here are some pictures...............two versions...........spinning on the horror comic theme, as I like to do..............perhaps the red star is cold war juju..............a hex on the capitalist state of mind....the horror!

digital art collage: Paradise Lake

>digital art collage<

'We artists must contribute to the creation of a true network of information and communication from the grassroots that opposes the broadcast network of the system.'

- Declaration Of The Argentine Artists Committee, 1968

........................meanwhile, in my lonely room (metaphorically) I exist as part of no network but can at least say I am 'grassroots'.................................................................................................................................

here's a picture

& here's version which began as a joke about space in the place of art but became, once finished, something one may interpret as an 'ecological message' (unintentionally)

Don't Buy Art....

...........that's right..............

why bother when you can look at all this art online for nothing?!

&

even if you think it's good, you don't have to buy it!

(happy browsing!)

(& keep artists poor...they function best that way!)

Having Trouble?

Struggling Artist

.....come on feel the noise.....

Prints

A few of the prints that will be available soon...

Digital art collage prints

In My Own Cracked Way I'm Trying To Tell You That I Love You

This began with the woman's head, upon which I felt compelled to place an explosion. I often feel the urge to have either the heads or minds of figures exploding. It is either a simple dramatic device or a constant desire to depict the mind in a state of turmoil. Probably both. Are the men on scaffolding metaphorically building a bridge between the male and female figures? Mending a broken heart? Or constructing the image? Why the image of domestic bliss between mother and children? Who is the watcher? These and other questions will remain unanswered except, perhaps, in your own mind...

Digital art

Every Meal A Masterpiece

Lee & Perrins ad, 1941

How To Get Your Art Noticed

How to get your art noticed...and I've taken no notice of any of it...which is why nobody has noticed me...

Allan Kaprow & Doing Nothing

Falling (blow up detail), (A)RTomens c 2015

***

   

'Once, the critics and public had to be shown; now they are full of authority and the artists are full of doubts.'

Just finished the Allan Kaprow collection Essays On The Blurring Of Art And Life. The quote above is from his 1966 'Manifesto', predicting the rise of The People As Critics on the internet? It turned out that way. He was writing at a time when art seemed popular, presumably, due largely to Pop, no doubt. It's impossible to say that 'artists are full of ' anything, of course, unless you despise contemporary art as touted by critics, in which case you have perhaps said 'artists are full of shit'.

Kaprow's perceived 'doubts' in the minds of artists arose from the crisis of direction in art circa '66. If there was one. As a figure who helped the Happening to become a thing, he was at the forefront of crisis management. You could say he was a main instigator of the crisis. Do something other than paint, sculpt or make anything? And call it 'art'. Why not?

I enjoyed the essays that weren't about Happenings. They don't interest me a great deal. I prefer Ray Johnson's idea of a Nothing event, which he started in '61. Something did happen, though, when Johnson finally appeared and 'emptied this box of spools down the staircase' at New York's AG Gallery, according to Ed Plunkett. It would have been better to do nothing, surely. 

I've been performing Nothing (a contradiction in terms, I know) all afternoon. Nobody witnessed it, though, so you'll have to take my word for it. Whilst it frustrates me not to have made Something, such days are inevitable. For now, I shall convince myself that in doing nothing (creatively) I was simply blurring the boundaries between art and life. In other words, imagining art to come, partly making it in my head, whilst actually just living. 

Break The Artists Strike

Ad Reinhardt, Rough Sketch for a Leaflet in the “Event” or “Happening” of a Fine-Artists Strike, c. 1961

Via

Lovers

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream