For lack of anything verbal or written to contribute immediately to public eDiscourse due to gross information burnout, I submit, instead:

Scrawlings!

(Click to enlarge)

Song of the Soused, 12 Jan 2010

Zucchini Love, 03 Jan 2010

Sachs of Shit, 24 Dec 2009

This has been your Art Break for the evening. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Haiti, already in progress.

Much love,
Mr. Cargo

Happy holidays!

When we think of art, we don’t generally think about the functional pieces of our lives. I wouldn’t claim that my grubby Levis – torn, covered in dried paint and stained with automobile grease and ground-in grass – are art, for example. But as our “What’s it Wednesday” feature has shown, everyday functional objects can be made into art by the perspective of a photographer or an artist looking to create art, but does that mean that the object itself was art? Perhaps, but probably not.

But sometimes functional objects are art. The most common example is architecture – eminently functional, but created to be beautiful or disturbing or awesome or weird, depending on the desires of the architect and the customer. Still, most people wouldn’t consider something as mundane as an automatic pencil as art. Allow me to broaden your mind.

The automatic pencil at right is mine. It’s a Pentel PD345 QuickerClicker with 0.5 mm diameter lead in blue (originally available in gray as well), and I use it nearly every day I’m at work and I had to repair it recently with SuperGlue. It’s one of three or four that I’ve had since I discovered them during my undergraduate studies between 1991 and 1995, and there’s a decent chance that it’s older than my relationship with my wife. And it is a functional work of art, although of a type of art that most people don’t understand.

At first glance, there’s nothing special about the QuickerClicker. It’s a tube of blue plastic with an eraser and a clip. But as with any art, there is so much more.

First, the pencil body is slightly flared at the bottom, where you grip it. The slight flaring makes it more ergonomic and comfortable to hold, but without requiring a NEAR-G (Nasty Evil Annoying Rubber Grip^TM).

Second, the clip is metal, not plastic, so it lasts through years of being fiddled with instead of snapping off in the middle of meeting, flying across the table, and smacking your customer in the forehead. And the clip fastens to the back of pencil, protecting the pencil’s plastic body from the rigors of erasing and reducing the chance that the pencil will snap or bend.

Third, the eraser is 1/4 inch across, not a mere 1/8 inch like most other automatic pencils. The eraser is therefore big enough not to snap off while erasing large jobs but fine enough to erase a single error in six pages of algebra written on a quadrille engineering tablet. The eraser is held into the body of the pencil with a metal clip that holds the eraser tight but also allows for easy replacement.

Fourth, the pencil’s point is easily unscrewed to allow you to clean out the tip if you’ve got a jam, but it doesn’t come untwisted on its own.

Fifth, the pencil lead is held in a compartment that is large enough hold dozens of leads, not five or six like most automatic pencils hold before jamming. This is because most automatic pencils store their lead in a small cylinder inside the pencil’s body that is roughly the same size as a ballpoint pen. The QuickerClicker’s lead area is the full diameter of the pencil body.

And finally, the advancement mechanism is located in the body of the pencil, nearly underneath where you’d normally rest your thumb, instead of up in the top of the pencil with the eraser. It’s this mechanism that enables the larger eraser and the QuickerClicker’s ability to store so much lead.

Combined, these attributes mean that the QuickerClicker is an object with clean lines, that efficiently performs its functions, and meets the user’s need for a quality writing utensil. It’s a well engineered tool, but that’s only partly what makes it a work of art.

All engineering disciplines that I’m familiar with are roughly equal parts creativity and science. And as with any creative endeavor, there’s an art to engineering a good product. It takes a firm understanding of what the customer wants and needs, the palette of materials and components available, and the tools that make the job possible. In many ways, an electrical engineer “paints” his art with op amps and microprocessors, or he “sculpts” his circuit boards with epoxy, fiberglass, and copper plate. If you work long enough in a large engineering organization, you begin to learn to detect the “brushstrokes” of another engineer’s work in the designs you see. In this case, you can see the artistry that went into creating the QuickerClicker

The most significant problem with calling the QuickerClicker, or any other functional object, “art” is the intent of the object’s creator. I doubt that the engineer or engineers who created the QuickerClicker intended it to be art, unlike a photographer or painter or sculptor. And so, perhaps it is not truly art in the same, intended sense. But if we define art instead as “that which broadens our minds and enables us to better understand and perceive reality,” then my old and worn automatic pencil is art.

I challenge each of you to look into your lives and find the things that you overlook all the time and try to appreciate them with new eyes. You may not conclude, as I have, that they qualify as art. But you’ll have a better appreciation for them.

Image Credit:
Jennifer Angliss

This first picture is of one of my friends shooting pool.  Look for the words: Light, Shadow, Rob, Shirt, Cueball, Cue, Table and Background.

This second shot is another done from the “Dia de los Muertos” art outing we went to, thus the phrase inspiration for this piece.

Reference photo shot on the phone and all work done “in phone” using “Type Drawing”.  Yeah baby….

Cass of the Dead

Dan of the Dead

Here is my next entry in the “Phone Artwork” series.  Again, the theme here is that everything from start to finish (including taking the original picture) was done on a mobile device.  And by mobile device I mean the device you use, amongst other things,  as a telephone.

The other day our friend MentalSwitch offered up a delightful little post entitled “Hello Nurse!” It featured a photo of an attractive model dressed as … well, hell, rather than me trying to describe the shot and failing miserably, why don’t you just click on over there and see for yourself. But before you do, please be forewarned that the photo is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!!

Ahem. Well, actually, its worksafeness (or unworksafeness thereof) became the topic of some discussion here. Initially the pic was posted without a cut, meaning that the image itself would appear on the front page of S&R. Later, after some complaint and brief deliberations, we moved it behind a cut with the dreaded “NSFW” tag, indicating that the content would most certainly get you fired if it were accidentally viewed by any decent, God-Fearing American^® co-worker. And since way too many of our readers work in places where others might be looking over their shoulders, this was a practical concern. As one colleague put it – and we’ll let that colleague name himself if he wants to – “if the wrong person had walked behind me with that image up on my screen, I could have been walked out the door that day, no appeal.”

Such is the reality for millions and millions and millions of people living here in the Land of the Free^®, the Home of the Brave^® and the Birthplace of the Religious Freedom^®.

As badly as it griped me to see such a fine, artistic photo hidden behind a cut like some tawdry porno you’d pay a Times Square carney a dollar to see (price adjusted for inflation), I also had no interest in seeing any of our intelligent, hard-working readers escorted out of their places of employment at gunpoint.

However, my colleague Dr. Slammy suggested that the all-too-standard NSFW tag – the Modern American Internet’s version of the Scarlet Letter – was a lingering stain on the credibility of the artist, and in due course I (apparently being ill of will and sharp of tongue) was enlisted to pen what you may take as an official Scholars & Rogues policy position.

Briefly stated, when you put an artist behind the Scarlet NSFW, you convey a general social verdict that shame should be attached to the work. It is not fit for general viewing; it is likely to be deemed offensive to some people; and those who choose to click the link, well, that’s between them and Jesus.

It does not matter whether such a judgment is reasonable. For instance, in the case of “Hello Nurse,” what really is there to be scadalized by? Let’s take a close look:

What is the supposed objection? The subject is of consenting age. No aberrant sexual acts are depicted. Hell, she’s not even partially naked. No vajayjay showing. No boobies. She’s not fondling herself (at the moment, anyway). There is an aspect of the erotic in her pose, of course, but let’s be clear here: whatever obscenity might arise from the communication of this image lies entirely within the mind of the viewer.

Goddammit, people, you can see more NSFWing imagery any goddamned night of the week on any goddamned channel on television during goddamned prime time. If this is NSFW, then the publishers of every fashion magazine available in America need to be hung in the public square right fucking now!!!

Oh, I’m sorry – is my invective NSFW?

It is true, as another of my unnamed colleagues pointed out, that good art seeks to provoke. MentalSwitch isn’t an especially in-your-face artist, but it is also true that his work routinely challenges convention in ways that are guaranteed to provoke, and it’s not hard to conclude who the targets of his critiques are. As he explains in the notes accompanying a portrait of “Lizzy”:

If all Christians were like this guy then the world would be a better place. On the other hand, if all Christians were like this guy we wouldn’t even recognize Christianity anymore….

Well played, that.

Welcome to 17th Century Salem, folks. Welcome to neo-Puritan America, a land where dismemberments and flying body parts and mushroom clouds and elected officials intentionally and strategically lying to their constituents are cool but a woman wearing four times more clothing than every teenaged girl around every swimming pool in the United States is NSFW. Because she looks suspiciously like she might enjoy sex in a non-missionary position. And sex is not to be imagined. Pictures that might make us think of sex are not to be condoned.

In neo-Puritan America, millions of people wake up every morning praying that the Lord will afford them an opportunity during the day to be offended. Hypocritical offense is next to godliness and the Constitution apparently has a clause about the right not to be exposed to anything you don’t like. Lawyers will be summoned. Human Resources policies will be invoked. Sinners will be terminated. And Hester Prynne will have a red NSFW branded on her twitchy, hellbound little ass, BY GOD!

In case the theme of my rant hasn’t yet made itself apparent, the Scarlet NSFW brands the wrong person. Those whose visions challenge are to be positioned behind the screen of shame, while those who are afraid of ideas have their narrow prejudices reinforced by official policies and unspoken self-righteous bullying.

We will know America has finally attained a measure of enlightenment when the reverse of those statements is true.

In the meantime, I mentioned something about a policy, so here it is. Since, as I noted above, we have no interest in damaging the careers of our readers, and since we’re smart enough to know the reality of many workplaces, we’ll be placing things that we believe might offend the average granny-panty neo-Puritan behind a cut. But when we do, understand that it is not the artist whom we are indicting. It’s the Scarlet Letter crowd.

In addition, don’t be surprised to see NSFW replaced by NSFP – Not Safe For Puritans. (My original idea, Not Safe For Repressive Puritan Asshat Jesus Nazis, was deemed a bit unwieldy.)

At Scholars & Rogues, we don’t shrink from challenges. We’re not kept up at night by the unconventional. And we are absolutely, positively not afraid of ideas.

And we will not quietly pander to those who are.

New technology brings new creative outlets.  If you had told me ten years ago that I would be taking pictures and doing artistic manipulations on my PHONE I may not have believed you.  Yes, this piece (posted in the spirit of Halloween) was shot and fully edited on my iPhone.  It sort of reminds me of the closing scene of the director’s cut of Brazil (not the love-conquers-all version) and that’s okay.

Art as the Servant of Commerce

“… every Beatles song ever recorded is going to be advertising women’s underwear and sausages… It’s one thing you’re dead, but we’re still around! They don’t have any respect for the fact that we wrote and recorded those songs, and it was our lives.” – George Harrison, 1987.

“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.” – Walt Whitman

The Levi’s jeans company is currently running a new advertising campaign featuring Walt Whitman’s poems “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” and “America.” What sets the ads apart is the use of Thomas Edison’s 1890 recordings of Whitman himself reading the poems as images of 21st century heroin chic models clad in Levis cavort in scenes designed, one supposes, to suggest the new American realities – including as some in the blogosphere have noted, a scene in which a woman offers what can be interpreted as a Nazi style salute – but might simply be a dumbass mimicking a statue….

But I digress…

Over 20 years ago Apple Corps., representing McCartney, Harrison, Starr and Yoko Ono Lennon, won a legal decision preventing advertisers from using actual recordings by The Beatles as background music for commercials (this was precipitated by the infamous Nike “Revolution” ad). Beatle songs may be used in commercials, but only if they are performed by other artists. That explains Blackberry using “All You Need is Love” or Target using “Hello Goodbye” with other artists performing those Beatles classics.

Both Whitman and Harrison are dead. So if George was right, maybe having Whitman read his poetry to help a company that has offshored its plants and put thousands of Americans out of work to increase profits for stockholders and bonuses for its top executives while helping drive down wages for American workers is okay. And maybe using George’s song “Something” to sell Chrysler LeBarons for a company that was bailed out of bankruptcy by American taxpayer dollars (twice!) was okay because George wasn’t singing it.

But I digress again….

Art as Commerce?

Art has had a long history of depending on the kindness of strangers. Whether from royalty, religious institutions, or the wealthy, artists relied on patronage and commissions to support them and allow them to create their works. This made them vulnerable to patrons meddling – and perhaps to the enticement to compromise their art to guarantee they received support. The great “liberation” of artists that some claim occurred during the Romantic Period (two great examples being Beethoven and Byron who could command large fees from orchestras and publishers respectively because their work filled concert halls and sold books) is really a shift in support – from dependence on the support of wealthy elites, artists could look to the marketplace for livelihood. To achieve this end, however, required that artists consider how their works functioned as product in the marketplace. So again rises that issue of compromise (popularly seen as damaging to artistic integrity – and, indeed, to creativity).

Not all artists have accepted this view of work as product that must meet marketplace expectations, of course, and Whitman is an example – he worked variously as a journalist, teacher, clerk, and nurse to support himself because – well, initially his poetry didn’t sell. His poetry, far out of step with the verse of his time (which was highly formal in rhyme and meter) only gained acceptance slowly – and his reputation (and sales) have enlarged much more since his death than they did during his life. Even as art and commerce were merging (and audiences were turning from poetry to prose), Whitman made his poetry his life’s work – apparently without serious thought of recompense. And his reputation as America’s greatest poet grows with every passing year as audiences have come to appreciate his seriousness of purpose and artistic vision. (Think what

Harrison, on the surface, would seem the exemplar of the artist fully accepting his art as product. The staggering success of The Beatles music, based on its promotion and distribution as if it were “women’s underwear [or] sausages,” seems the triumph of commercial concerns over artistic ones. Yet the evolution of Harrison’s/The Beatles’ music from the simplicity that musicologist Wilfrid Mellers terms “Edenic” to the later problematic complexity that challenged, educated, and enriched audiences exploded the (once) popular conception of rock music as disposable and indeed raised rock musicians’ and audiences’ expectations of that music as an art form. As Harrison and The Beatles treated their music ever more seriously, their audience mirrored the artists’ seriousness by becoming serious listeners. As the art became greater, the audience became greater also.

So, it would seem from the examples of Whitman and Harrison/The Beatles, artists will find ways of expressing their art with integrity and creativity despite whatever temptations or rewards the material world may/may not offer. And audiences will recognize and appreciate this.

Artvertising

Art enriches human experience. It lifts us, changes us, takes us out of ourselves. It inspires us to think more, to feel more, to live life more fully.

The above claims are true, I suspect most of us would contend, but they can also be (and often are) attacked as truisms, as platitudes, as wishful thinking.

Making money, on the other hand, is, at least in one proven way, rewarding. Money will get us things – things like cars, video games, jeans.

And things – as we are constantly told by advertising – things will make us happy.

The above claim is untrue, I suspect most of us would contend, though advertising tries relentlessly to convince us otherwise.

And this is why advertising repeatedly attaches its claim to the claims of art. By associating buying jeans with great poetry or buying cars with a great song, advertising hopes that its audience will associate (or confuse, perhaps) the rewards of art with “getting and spending,”as Wordsworth put it.

But the public outrage that greeted the use of The Beatles’ work to sell sneakers two decades ago and that greets the use of Walt Whitman’s poetry to sell jeans today must give us hope that we are about more than things.

The Tate Museum has the finest collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner in the world, and from time to time they feel the need to refresh the public with another show to keep proving that Turner deserves the “greatest British artist ever” tag. Back in 2005 this resulted in a hugely interesting show called Turner, Whistler, Monet, which looked at the interactions between the three, and it was a genuine treat. This time around it’s Turner and the Masters, a look at the painters that influenced Turner. At least that’s the intention. And everyone loves it. Well, not quite everyone—only Brian Sewellseems to give it the critical eye it deserves. The Times calls it a “Magnificent and hugely ambitious exhibition.” It’s quoted right there on the Tate website. What it turns into, however, is something completely different, something along the lines of Turner the Competitive Cockney Gnome who Tried to Outdo Everyone without Ever Having an Original Idea.

This is certainly the impression we took away from the show, although I suspect it’s not what was intended. In fact, the real impression we had was the same as the one we had after seeing the Van Gogh and Millet show at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris many years ago—isn’t it interesting that van Gogh used Millet’s pictures as the architecture for many of his own paintings? It was known for years that van Gogh admired Millet, and even included “after Millet” in some of the titles of his works. But still, it was surprising to see how much copying was involved. “They are not copies,” Van Gogh told his brother, Theo, “but translations into another language.” Well, maybe, but after wandering through several rooms at the Musee d’Orsay, you’d actually be hard pressed to say that most of them weren’t copies, even if van Gogh transformed the scene with an entirely different sense of colour and a much more aggressive brushwork.

Van Gogh was at least lavish in his praise of Millet (”Millet is father Millet…counsellor and mentor in everything for young artists”), and never denied his debt. Turner, on the other hand, comes off poorly in this show, which was probably not the intent of the organizers. Yes, Turner was a prodigious painter, and the show concentrates on a small percentage of his output. But still, nearly every painting by Turner is paired with the painting that he was modelling in one way or another, and very often they are direct copies, with the only difference being Turner’s different use of colour and, again, his distinctive brushwork. And while he knew how to compose a picture as well as anyone, there are some pictures where the perspective just doesn’t make sense. And of course, like Bonnard, he just can’t paint people, a fact usually overlooked—or just ignored.

Now, this is always interesting—no artist works in isolation, there are always influences, and much of the fun of art appreciation is figuring out what those are. The fact that Whistler and Monet were friends shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s something you normally don’t think about. We think of artists as solitary beings, but even if that has some truth in terms of their lifestyles, it can’t be true in terms of where their art comes from. The line from Millet to van Gogh couldn’t be more direct. And it is interesting to see what Turner derived from, say, Rembrandt, or Watteau, of Cuyp, or the painter that Turner felt himself most in competition with—Claude. Turner often is a great artist. But here in London he’s not only a great artist, but the greatest of all time, it seems. One gets that impression, anyway—from the time Ruskin started trumpeting him as the greatest British artist ever, the art establishment in the UK has shown no signs of disputing this. Turner, like the Impressionists, has become an industry. Sewell, who has a reputation for not liking much of anything, has some words of praise for the show, but he also captures it about right, warts and all:

Turner belonged to a generation of artists whose work was deliberately rooted in the past, who could be measured by the comparison that revealed how much they had retained, how much rejected, and how much moved on by adding something new and of their own that might suggest that they had exceeded the successes of their mentors. Turner painted not in slavish imitation but in rivalry, and two centuries on it is easier to see where he matched Claude’s subtleties and Rembrandt’s bravura and where he failed utterly — for this is an exhibition not only of Turner’s occasional sublimities but of dogged recapitulation that is dull and failure that is ludicrous.

And that seems about right. When Turner was good, he was as good as anyone. But he often wasn’t that good—and yet somehow we’re supposed to ignore the fact that he often painted bad pictures.

The show brings up two reservations. First, if the show is representative of Turner’s output, it’s an extraordinarily derivative output, without a single new idea until very late in Turner’s career. I suspect that’s an unfair portrait of Turner—he was prolific, and this is just a sampling. But the Tate is telling us it’s an extremely important sampling, and there’s nothing in the show to tell you otherwise. Turner painted what other artists were also painting, and we’re supposed to take away that, well, he was Turner, that’s al you really need to know. It’s a bad analogy, I know, but I’ve been looking for a place to use it ever since I saw the movie Mama Mia (the biggest grossing movie of all time in the UK, amazingly enough)—my main reaction was “Who knew Abba wrote so many bad songs?” Sewell is absolutely right—there are an awful lot of bad paintings by Turner here, especially the ones on mythological subjects. And to pretend otherwise is just silly, and a bit insulting.

Second, it’s a chronological show, so you can see how Turner developed as an artist. Yes, he had many skills, but it wasn’t until he was old that he became Turner. The Turner we think about, and whose art still stuns, is the Turner who lapsed into pure light and atmosphere. And he didn’t start doing these paintings until he was an old man (or relatively one). Turner was bon in 1775. And those extraordinary maritime paintings, with the storms, and the clouds, and the spray, and the sun—the ones that really do take your breath away—those are from the 1840s. And while Turner was acknowledged as a major painter by his contemporaries even before he was painting these stunning seascapes, some explication of how Turner got to this style would have been appreciated, other than the bland comments we’re greeted with in the narrative.

Still, it’s a very interesting show, worth seeing. For one thing, it’s not often that the competitive nature of genius is acknowledged, and it’s refreshing to see it so openly acknowledged. And Turner was competitive, absolutely. And it is interesting to study the comparisons to see where Turner was successful, and where he failed. Plus there’s the bonus of seeing some exceptionally good art that doesn’t normally show up in London. The Rembrandts are at treat, for example, including The Old Mill, normally at home at The National Gallery in Washington. And Claude—well, you can see why it was that Turner targeted him as the one to beat. And there’s a small masterpiece—The White House at Chelsea, pictured just above—by Thomas Girtin, a friend of and (in the spirit of the show) competitor to Turner. Girtin died when he was quite young—in 1802, at age 27. And the show quotes Turner’s comment that “had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved.” Looking at this little gem, surrounded by dozens of larger and more grandiose pictures by Turner and others, you understand exactly what Turner meant.

S&R, on the other hand, writes about music. About literature and poetry. About art. Education. Sports. Culture and popular culture. The Ramsey case and what it tells us about the state of media. And now that the election is over, S&R is writing about politics less than ever.

So really, what is S&R?

One response might argue that tout est politique. I’ve never been terribly comfortable with totalizing positions like this, though, because they tend to trivialize – if everything is politics, then nothing is. However, there’s no denying the fundamental truth that many things we don’t commonly associate with politics are powerfully political in their implications.

Take popular music, for instance. It’s impossible to consider the sweeping cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s without the soundtrack – Dylan, The Beatles, Woodstock…the list goes on and on. Some of those artists were quite explicitly agitating for political reform while others wove themselves into the social tapestry in less obvious ways, but the sum total of the music of that decade was inherently political.

Contrast that with the music of the Bush administration. Where was the protest, the outcry? Who was the Dylan of the 2000s? What record will we be comparing, come 2024, with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?

The absence of such a voice was not an accident. Part of the grand conservative plan, the blitzkrieg that was launched upon Reagan’s inauguration, was the neutering of music’s political possibility. When Ronnie’s FCC hacks, Fowler and Brenner, decreed that “the public interest is what the public is interested in,” it did so in order to subvert, once and for all, the power of the creative social mind to the will of corporate logic. It dismantled radio ownership limits that assured a massive diversity of options for artists and audiences alike, and found its ultimate expression in Clear Channel’s pro-war, pro-Bush rallies and the banishment of those who chose to give voice to their dissent (the most notable case being the attempted silencing of The Dixie Chicks).

So when our generation needed to be marching in the streets and demanding an end to the outrage in Iraq, where was the soundtrack? Who ultimately benefited from those policies way back in the early ’80s? We’re fighting an unjust invasion and occupation and the rallies in the streets are for the war?! Corporate-sponsored pro-war rallies?!

When I’m writing a TunesDay piece on some band or another, providing a video link or encouraging you to check it out at eMusic, part of what’s going on is purely and simply about the music as art. But it’s also about the bigger picture, about the need for our culture to build a strong platform whereby artists can be heard. If they use this platform to sing silly love songs, that’s fine, so long as the platform is there when they need to sing about injustice. I recently did a piece promoting The Well Wishers, Maximo Park and The Dandy Warhols, and none of these bands may ever contribute a note to the cause of world peace. On the other hand, if I flash back to 1997 and Green Day’s Nimrod, I’m not sure I could have predicted American Idiot, a manifesto so powerful that not even the soul-deadening corporate might of Clear Channel could contain it.

What political blogs do is important, especially in a society where the legacy press has largely abdicated its responsibility to watchdog our institutions of power. Who Obama selects to run the State Department matters. His choices for Treasury and Defense and our various intelligence and military leadership posts matter tremendously.

But empires rarely rise and fall as a result of a couple close-in political knife fights. In my view, a great deal of what even the best poliblogs do is tactical, street-level and near-term. This isn’t true across the board, of course. There are outstanding thinkers and writers who are looking at the big picture and the long term. And this is where I think S&R has done and will continue to do its best work. Not in the political battle, but the culture war.

We may debate some of the nuances and specifics amongst ourselves, but in general it’s safe to say that those of us here at Scholars & Rogues have a shared vision of a more progressive society. I don’t use that word in any sort of conventional, partisan sense. By “progressive” I mean more enlightened; better educated; more appreciative of the cultural arts; better informed about the forces shaping our world; more productively spiritual (and less dogmatically sectarian) in our approach to life; more generous and charitable; more tolerant and more willing to understand the value of diversity; more committed to community and the common good; more literate; more intellectually curious and prone to critical thought; more responsive to the well-reasoned than to the passionately felt; and above all, more insistent that those we choose to represent us, to lead us and to govern us be the best America has to offer, not the worst.

Some of the solutions that get us to our destination may be “liberal” by our current reckoning, some “conservative.” The best ideas may be “idealistic” or they may be “pragmatic.” But in the end, I think most of us believe that a society that reads – in an environment uncluttered by censorship, either active or passive, governmental or cultural or corporate – is in better shape than one that doesn’t read or won’t. A society whose citizens not only have knowledge in their heads, but who have been trained to use it in innovative ways is more likely to solve more problems faster and more effectively. A country that thinks and thinks relentlessly is nearly immune to the machinations of despotism. A nation whose mythologies make clear that war is the last resort, not the first, is more likely to achieve greatness both at home and abroad. A nation whose media structures are designed to foster the best that is thought and created is one whose streets are less likely to flow with the blood of aggrieved citizens. A culture where competition aims to help people up the ladder instead of keeping them in their place is one that maximizes its collective genius. A political economy where genuine opportunity arises from a level playing field is certainly more likely to produce spectacular successes than one where the reality is that of a rigged game played beneath a banner of cynical egalitarian rhetoric.

And the most actualized of all possible societies is one where happiness and satisfaction have nothing at all to do with purchasing power.

This is what I think Scholars & Rogues is. We’ve covered a lot of ground since we launched less than two years ago, and at that point I deliberately chose not to compose a mission statement. Our philosophy was simple: invite the smartest people we could find to share their thoughts and trust the power of that intellect to start great conversations, attract more great minds and build the foundation of a thriving community. With that in place, I wanted to learn what we were rather than dictating what we would be.

Some of what we write may look trivial at first, and the occasional item may even prove trivial in the final analysis. But I think we now have a good sense of what we are and why our readers keep stopping by. We hope our political writings are worthy in the coming months and (if we’re lucky) years, and we expect that our audience will grasp the deeper political mission embedded in our far-flung musings.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to work toward a better culture, and in doing so will trust that if you enlighten the people and establish social structures that exalt the best they have to offer, the merely political will take care of itself.

When is a Work of art truly original? Put another way: when is a Work not derivative of someone else’s work?

It is hard not to be influenced by other’s work, especially when the Work is memorable, or stunning. We all become attracted to Works that speak to us deeply in Form Language. We absorb elements of those deeply-felt, deeply-held images into our minds. And often unknowingly, we regurgitate those spatial or stylistic elements into our own work, creating homages and lineages of the original. It is very hard to escape this transmission, and re-transmission, of culture.

Maddeningly, we are circumscribed to a fixed set of ideas transmitted by our Culture. Our accumulated knowledge in this space-time dictates the idea-palette to work with. We will take artistic risks often within the bounds of what has been taught to us as acceptable risk via mentors [institutional knowledge], books and schools. We can only use what is known to create Works. We are trapped in Time.

Isn’t it common knowledge, a truism, that Art’s potential is limitless? I am struck at how limited the range of expression is.

What is the list of images I can portray in Art, anyways? It is a rather fixed list: the body, the gender, the animal, the lovers, the group, the life scene (birth, sex, death), the sky, the darkness, the colour field, landscape feature, form itself, the molecular, the geometric, the symmetric, light/shadow study, and the retransfiguration of all of these (by filter, by color, by medium, by process). Ask me to create something truly new, not derivative: that is very difficult.

Why do you think categories and taxonomies exist to group Artistic works? Because they lend themselves to such designations.

At this stage in my life, I have convinced myself that I can create some signature-styled portraits, pretty damn near my own creations — but on inspection, I can usually trace other artists’ genetics in my Work, from all the ideas I have observed and read in my lifetime (vis-a-vis Derrida’s Deconstructionism). Rarely can I witness a totally new direction, a new initiative, to anything I have ever encountered.

I get excited when this happens. I say to myself: this new work is truly NOT derivative! Of course, if I had access to the entire history of creative work — all the drafts of all the works of every artist and would-be-artist who have ever lived, I might uncover the original DNA of the new work I celebrate. That would not surprise me.

We, as humans, have a fixed set of experiences. We have a fixed set of tools. We have a fixed set of colours. We have a fixed set of styles. We have a fixed set of archetypal themes. We have a fixed sensory range. We are human, and thus we are bound to repeat ourselves. Don’t think Picasso or Moore were the first Primitives. Don’t think Rodin and Michelangelo were the first Egyptians. Don’t think Manet was the first Eroticist. Don’t think that Braque was the first Cubist. Don’t think Valesquez was the first Sensualist. And so on.

There are true and utter Originals — paradigm destroyers, and they are rare. Their actual values are priceless, beyond the tens of millions of dollars that are commanded for the most popular [albeit admittedly vibrant, breathing] works. Yes, save the Picassos, but save the Originals, too! And, most importantly, celebrate the messages of the Originals, and of the Picassos, that speak to the Humanity of us — about the Humanity of us.

Where we are going. This evolutionary existential animal of progress.

Michael James Hawk is an artist who lives in Seattle. Media he currently works in include: wire figurative sculpture, organic gourd-like wire lamps, hydrocal plaster figurative sculpture, clay set-ups for bronze figurative sculpture, modal-animated poetry films, acrylic painting, and spraypaint abstract.

“I’m interested in what motivates you, and how you understand the world.” He glanced sideways at her. “Rausch tells me you’ve written about music.”

“Sixties garage bands. I started writing about them when I was still in the Curfew.”"Were they an inspiration?”

She was watching a fourteen-inch display on the Maybach’s dash, the red cursor that was the car proceeding along the green line that was Sunset. She looked up at him. “Not in any linear way, musically. They were my favorite bands. Are,” she corrected herself.

He nodded.

- William Gibson, Spook Country

I’ve always been intrigued by the curious dynamic of influence. This passage from Gibson’s latest finds the protagonist, a journalist who was formerly part of a short-lived band (of precisely the sort you’d expect to fascinate Gibson – not a huge commercial success, but possessing an intellectual depth that would assure riveted cult status for a generation or more) talking with her new employer (again, a typically Gibsonian character, intrigued by the potential to bridge the critically obscure with the commercially popular). In the exchange, we understand that Hollis (the protag) was influenced, but not in a linear (read, discernable) fashion, by music of a completely different genre than what she was producing.

I was thinking about this as I listened to Midnight Matinee, the new release from The Lost Patrol, a band that made my Best of list last year for their outstanding Launch and Landing CD. When you visit their MySpace page and scroll down to “Influences,” you get the damnedest list: Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Johnny Cash, The Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Ventures, The Stranglers, Phil Spector, Julee Cruise, Cocteau Twins, Jesus and Mary Chain, Gary Numan, The Church, The Damned, The Chameleons, Dusty Springfield, The Cure, V.A.S.T., The Nightblooms, The Cult, The Beach Boys, Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats, A Flock of Seagulls, Dead Can Dance, Smashing Pumpkins, Sisters of Mercy, The Shadows, Al Caiola, Jack Nitzsche, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, The Verve, Jean Michel Jarre, Duane Eddy, Andy Williams, Angelo Badalamenti, Allison Krause & Union Station, Mazzy Star, Tarnation, The Catherine Wheel, The Sundays, Sigur Rós, Echo and The Bunnymen, Medieval Baebes, Aimee Mann, Miranda Sex Garden, The Shaggs, Joanna Newsom, Goldfrapp, X, Kate Bush, Lovespirals, Abby Travis and Curve.

Now, a lot of this makes sense when you listen to them. But then you get some more influences: films by David Lynch, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch, Wes Andersen, Sergio Leone and John Waters.

Again, a lot of this makes sense when you consider the way in which The Lost Patrol’s music connotes landscape – wide, empty, frontier spaces at dusk, burnt oranges fading to blackest, solitary blue.

Once upon a time I thought of influence in that linear form that Hollis references – poets inspired by poets in ways that were evident upon reading. Musicians whose lineage could be tracked in quirks of phrasing. Painters whose technique never quite escaped the gravitational well of the masters they copied in their adolescence. And so on. As I learned and developed in my own right, though, I came to understand the non-linearity of influence: how one musical style could inform something new and apparently different; how certain types of influence can hide in the woodwork, only revealing themselves to those who study the hardest; and how influence can work across genres – music on poetry, painting on film, dance on sculpture, etc.

Those who have read my poetry have noted the straight-line artistic heritage: Eliot, Yeats, Thomas, Charles Wright. (Not that I’m worthy of those comparisons at all – it’s just that whatever I have done has aspired in the direction of these epic artists.) But I also like to note how important my early exposure to ancient masters like John Donne shaped my perspective – I doubt that’s as evident to most readers.

Earlier in my “career” I played with rock music influences, as well, sometimes going so far as to riff on Springsteen and Mellencamp and U2, and today my poems are frequently indebted to all kinds of musical insurgencies.

But there’s more. My writing has always been pretty impressionist. I’ve never worried about the hard narrative edges of the “stories” being told, but have instead focused on the imagistic, on the colors and vague shapes and details that were deliberately misremembered. There’s a lot of Monet and Degas in my poetry, in other words.

I was once called a “Jungian pagan” by a friend (who’s probably reading this and can identify himself if he wants to), and while I’m not 100% sure I’ve figured out what that means, there’s no denying that my writing trades heavily in the iconic, the totemic, the deeply symbolic. Jung? Sure, but also Yeats doubles back in here, and I can’t disregard the importance of Tarot in helping me think about what lies at the core of certain people, events, relationships, etc.

And what about the guy quoted at the top, William Gibson? The world I write about is frequently technological and urban, concerning itself with how my culture and my generation are being, have been, colonized by autonomous technology – that is, technology that appears to operate with its own agenda. Gibson is a core part of that, as is Bruce Sterling, and in depicting these moments I also draw on visual imagery from films like Blade Runner and the oeuvre-wide vision of directors like Tim Burton.

There’s nothing terribly profound in all this. Essentially it boils down to “influence is a highly asymmetrical, nonlinear process.” But since a novel and CD got me to thinking about my poetry, it seemed a worthy subject for a Sunday blog.

Grab a walking stick, sling on a backpack, grab a notebook, and don your pith helmet. Keri Smith and her inventive new book want you to go exploring in an effort to free your creativity.

How to be an Explorer of the World: Portable Art Life Museum challenges readers to look at the world around them with fresh eyes. “Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles,” Smith writes.

In that vein, Smith’s book reads like a primer on how to capture everyday wonder.

Set up like a workbook, How to be an Explorer of the World is divided into three main parts: a how-to-use-this-book section that helps a reader discover the right mindset for exploration, a section that contains almost 60 exploration exercises, and a section for jotting down field notes.

Smith invites readers to think of the book as a “metaphorical suitcase,” a place to collect and document thoughts, ideas, and observations. “It is also your museum,” she says. “Your very own museum that will contain your unique vision of the world… You can visit your museum whenever you need ideas (or if you want to see what is floating around in your brain).”

The book appeals to both mind and hands. Smith urges readers to collect, examine, touch, consider, move, write, manipulate, listen, reflect, wander, and wonder. She starts by offering a list of 13 tips on how to be an explorer of the world, a list she came up with one night when she couldn’t sleep. “Always be looking,” she advises as her number-one guideline. “Everything is interesting. Look closer.”

But she’s quick to point out in her opening that she’s trying to create a frame of mind, not a set of immutable laws. “There are no rules, only suggestions,” she says. “Treat everything as an experiment. Start with whatever makes you feel a twinge of excitement.”

Some of the advice that follows seems obvious and commonsensical, but part of her point is that the things that are obvious to us are the things we are most apt to overlook. Readers might sometimes be half-tempted to think, “Well, duh!” but Smith’s straightforward sincerity completely disarms such thoughts. She is as earnest as a golden retriever in her encouragement and enthusiasm. The world through Smith’s eyes is an exciting place.

Smith places great emphasis on “found” things—items a person might happen to find lying around the house or in the forest or in a corner of the basement. Wonder exists all around us in everyday, mundane things.

In that spirit, her book has a homemade feel. It’s entirely hand lettered, for instance, which allows the text to wander across the page in much the same way Smith encourages readers to wander. The charm lasts for the first 60 pages or so, but after that, it does get a little tedious. When Smith includes hand-drawn graph paper in the back of the book, it’s hard not roll one’s eyes.

Fortunately, Smith packs enough cool ideas and explorations into her book that the book never gets too tedious. Smith’s own sense of wonder is far too effervescent to let that happen.

In one activity, she encourages explorers to go for a walk and indentify existing “art” found along the way—accidental art not created on purpose. “Some examples include stains on the sidewalk, spilled paint…residue, corrosion, rust, things that are damaged, random arrangements of objects that you find interesting….” In another activity, she challenges explorers to “come up with several ways of documenting the passage of time, based on where you are sitting.”

While the book’s intended audience may be visual artists and writers, teachers of all grade levels will also find this book a welcome addition to a classroom. For elementary teachers, How to be an Explorer of the World offers fun, hands-on activities applicable to a variety of disciplines, while middle- and high-school English and art teachers will find useful tools for unlocking student creativity.

But in a wider sense, anyone looking to challenge the way he or she looks at the world, anyone looking to think outside the box, and anyone looking to explore will all find How to be an Explorer of the World an invaluable source of energy and inspiration.

Happy exploring!

Last night we watched the Final Cut of Blade Runner again, and if you don’t have this package I can’t recommend it highly enough. 25 years on, Ridley Scott was able to finally re-craft the film as he wanted it originally, and the result is a stunning achievement. Scott has been one of our greatest directors for a very long time, but this may be his finest moment to date.

This viewing (probably my 35th or 40th – I lost count a long time ago) got me to thinking, all over again, about how little the film was acknowledged at the time of its release. While it was nominated for two technical Oscars (Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Effects, Visual Effects), it’s hard to look back and argue that it got anything like the critical acclaim it deserved (a point underscored by how well respected the film is today). In addition, it didn’t do very well at the box office (it drew a little over $6M that opening weekend, and the theater I saw it in was 90% empty).

Now, though, history has reassessed Blade Runner. Roger Ebert added it to his list of greatest films after seeing the Final Cut, and our friends at Wikipedia catalog the rest:

• In 2007, the American Film Institute listed it as the 97th greatest film of all time, making it new to the list, having been left off the 1997 version. In 2008, Blade Runner was voted the sixth best science fiction film ever made as part of the AFI’s 10 Top 10.[72]
• Blade Runner is currently ranked the third best film of all time by The Screen Directory.[73]
• One of Time’s 100 All-Time best movies.[74]
• British movie magazine Empire voted it the “Best Science Fiction Film Ever” in 2007.
• In 2002, Blade Runner was voted the 8th greatest film of all time in Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Films poll.

All of which brings me back around to a favorite topic of mine: art whose greatness was not realized in its time. “In its time” is a malleable phrase, of course. With film it might mean anything from “opening weekend” to 25 years or beyond, and with other, older forms of art we could be talking about decades. For purposes of today’s ArtSunday, I’ll let you, the reader, make you own calls about this.

From where I stand, Blade Runner is the greatest example in film of a work that critics and audiences whiffed on at the time of release. It was largely ignored or panned, over time evolved into “cult status,” and was eventually validated both critically and commercially well after the fact. No other film I can think of surpasses Blade Runner in this respect.

Other genres have their own examples of greatness discovered late (or even too late), of course. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, now regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Victorian Era, was never published in his lifetime, for instance.

Today, then, we invite our readers to offer their favorite examples of “the Blade Runner Effect” – that is, the condition of “late greatness” by art that was not duly acclaimed in its time.

That done, I’m certain a store near you is selling the 25th anniversary box of Ridley Scott’s classic. Go grab it, and while you’re out, stop by one of your finer bookstores and pick up a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the superb Philip K. Dick novel on which it was based.

Oh, yeah – Philip K. Dick. Speaking of artists who never really got their full due….