The Good Life

I have been living in Long Island City for a little more than a year. Before that I was in Bushwick for a few months...I guess I need a relationship to Bohemia..white-ish bohemia mostly but a diversified slant. Why do I consider this good? Why is this lifestyle better than say...Pasadena or Westchester? Well there is more freedom of expression even if said expression is the tedious indulgences of amateurs. There are more personal "liberties", more self destructive drug abuse and alcoholism..(is there) ..fewer children..fewer (white) children, schools (good ones) swimming pools..conformity ... routine...

pure art

The rich and educated..who are your audience..don't want to be bogged down with your point of view..you REALLY don't know anything that they don't..they just want something that they can live with day after day...

Art..The Hamptons

My years in the Hamptons from 1989 to 1993 and beyond were possibly the most significant adult adventure in my life to date. They were my REAL art schooling. I had dropped out of RISD in 1983. I lived with my mom, did est, moved to NoVa with her and was really desperate to get out on my own. I joined the Coast Guard in 1987 and eventually got stationed on dry land in East Moriches Long Island. They gave me a small house in Flanders for a short while and in my mind I fancied myself as Jackson Pollock or Wilhem de Kooning doing these hopelessly amateur slap dash pieces that were derivative of my pedestrian understanding of Larry Rivers, Basquiat, Richard Prince..jeez you name it. Things didn't get rolling until I met a girl, Miranda Gatewood, a photographer who lived in Sag Harbor. She was terrific. She introduced me to Joey Weyand who ran a gallery in So Hampton called "Arts 1" his ambition was to meet Henry Geldzahler and become famous. That's the way it was in the Hamptons. It was so easy to meet power people, you thought that sooner or later they would just get you "in". Joey introduced me to Michael Knigin and so on..I started to connect with the artistic community in the East End..Ruth Vered Gallery, Rene Fotouhi, John Chamberlain, Robert Dash, Ross Bleckner, Larry Rivers etc. My dream to this day is to make it to that level of beingness..the floating cultural elite..I always tried to "think" my way in..reading Sartre "Search for a Method", Scientology books and tapes, Penguin classics..always trying to "decode" access..I felt like the answer was right in front of me but I wasn't seeing the "pattern"...my ticket to the salt box studio in
Sagaponack.

East Hampton /Bridgehampton

Ontology, Phenomenology

The blog is going to take a much more theoretical turn now. I have noticed that I have been much more "distracted" of late w/regard to the art project. I am trying to formulate AS SUCH..as a "SOCIAL" project as much as technical and practical. I (the agent) installed in a contemporary situation exercise my freedom to choose a given social direction, mobilizing my energies and those of others in a specific path and direction. It's a trial and error opus involving self-generated ends and goals.

Arrival cont'd..The Project

What is the project of "the Artist"? An Artist..A particular artist..or me? To me. from my viewpoint I live in Post-War consumer culture america. I was a young man in the turbulence of the 60's and 70's where the radical pose experienced a heyday..as the 80's morphed into the 90's so much had now been accomplished that "radicalism as such" now became another lifestyle commodity. It was harder to justify your "refusal" of the bourgeois when blacks, gays, women, the disabled, asians, hispanics, and so on had more access and protection than ever. Anyhow why even THINK that all art aims at radical subversion of the mainstream? Can we just come out now and say "Hey I LIKE Gainsbourough, Vivaldi, Andrew Wyeth..etc.."?
An artist.."I" want recognition, money, "security" a house in Bridgehampton..to be one of the "chosen" showing in the better/best galleries commanding the highest prices..while young enuff to enjoy it..

The Arrival

What is the best outcome here?
1. The Hamptons
2. Christies
3. Williamsburg
4. Chelsea
5. Existentialism
6. Harlem
7. Crestview Fla
8. Foucalt, Freud, Paglia
9. Basquiat
10. Richard Prince
11. Day jobs
12. RISD
13. est, Hubbard, Watts, Perls
14. Dalton
15. 47 yrs old

Art Professing

I guess it was at Dalton where I forged the fundamental considerations about doing it for a living..or WHAT to do for a living. As a kid I just DID it you know. No big deal. Dalton of course showed me REALLY wealthy successful people, whereas in the ghetto or my black background, everyone was more or less an abject failure. I met Ivan Chermayeff, the Glimchers, Michael Rosenfeld, Mort Janklow, Saul Steinberg's kids..etc.
I experienced the GOOD life as over there and rejected or ran away from my own beginnings..but how could I realistically do what Sabine Howard and Jacob Collins do? That western traditionalist stuff? White nudes, still lifes, judges and dentists?
I was and still am conflicted about subject matter. I failed to connect with other black artists of my generation, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Leonardo Drew, and Thelma Golden all actively dislike me...

Art and Such

When I was bussed to school in 2nd and 3rd Grade ( Crestview Fla) I got my first art "award"..I won first place for a tempera painting of a black dog, my black dog. A sherriff's son asked me to do a drawing for a fifty cent piece. My grandmother made me give it back.
By 4th grade I had discovered comic books. I was in love. I bought a ton of them before finally throwing them out after college.
I got a scholarship to Dalton in 1972, 5th grade, that was when I really began my studies of the "white man's world of art". Robert Lahotan was my first Dalton art teacher. He had us drawing these dull, dull, dull still lives and all that. I pretended to be allergic to charcoal. I think I really was kinda...

Art as such..

When I was like, y'know 5 years old I started drawing on my mother's envelopes and any suitable drawing surface. I drew the Flintstones, Batman and Robin..those were my first subjects. Next was people. Black people, in the surrounding "ghetto". Eventually my mom recognized my interest and bought me a Grumbacher sketchbook. I don't have ANY of them. I was never good at saving things. She never took it seriously enuff to save anything either. I think white people "save" art more. They have a diff attitude about objects and property in general. There are no "museums" in African societies. My Jewish 4th grade teacher bought me my first set of oil pastels and gave me a couple of volumes of the encyclopaedia of art. That was my first real encounter with white art history, semi-nude white people in Rennaissance friezes. I was more interested in comic books. I loved Neal Adams.