Crying in My Beer

Publisher Mat Gleason announces in issue #90 of his little art magazine Coagula that he has curated a show called 8 Under 28, a show he hopes "illustrates the death of media and pop culture as ubiquitous sources of content for contemporary art."

huh.

The show is at Gallery C in Hermosa Beach (of all places) and purports to be a harbinger of the new wave in art history. A "sea change," Gleason says, "the future of American art."

Well, I'll be...

From the exhibition notes:

Many young artists are turning their backs on five decades of grandfather's Pop Art and the aging pointlessness of Post-Modernism. These eight locals lead a generational shift with an art that enbraces reckless certainty and conceptual purposefulness. Their work, in a variety of media, abandons both the tidy illustrations of academic theory and the cult of the well-made fetish object.

There's more, but it's too terrible, I can't go on.

Wait until you see the art. No wait, you don't have to. Because it isn't about the art. It's about some self-inflated, heroic notion of avant guarde. God, when is going to end? I suppose the adolescent has to feel he is leading a charge, or else he won't leave home, but really, haven't we learned anything from Foucault? Okay, so I haven't read him either, nor Einstein, but I do get the ideas. They're everywhere, watered down I suppose, but still shaping how we see the world. And it isn't linear anymore.

There's no grand scheme in art, no one arc —and there has never been. All along, despite what your history books might say, there have been many voices, many styles. Sure there's fashion—the new and popular look of the season—but art history, any history, is a story told from the narrow point of view of the teller and there is always something left out. Expand the viewfinder, turn around and there's more and different. Diversity is everywhere; it's all relative.

I'm sorry. This is so basic. Feel my frustration. Do you feel it?

Why does Gleason need to set his 8 in opposition to Warhol, grandfathers, any body? Why the need to kill Pop? "The King is dead. Long live the King!" It's the pretense of overthrowing the old order, as Harold Rosenberg once said.

Talk about old school—the notion of "avant guarde" or "cutting edge" is so... old.

Sigh.

Well, speaking of old. Since I feel old just writing this, let me add something else that I came across recently.

From the Andre Zarre Gallery website:

The gallery is looking for young emerging artists only. Fresh, innovative, interesting works and new ideas. Artists between ages 24 to 34. Preferable works: Abstract Sculptures, Figurative and Abstract Paintings.

Where to start even to deconstruct it?

It makes me cry.

Fortuna and Ale

In LA there is a little newsprint magazine floating around, Coagula Art Journal. The writing, wry, ironic, sarcastic, silly and serious, is about art, making it as an artist, art in LA. I approve. In issue #90, Senior Columnist (that's his title, seriously. Another is Poet. And ... Spiritual Advisor.) Any how. Senior Columnist, Gordy Grundy writies about a new venture of his: The Fellowship of Fortuna, "America's fastest growing art-centric religion." Oh yeah. I like it.

I also like the way he sets the stage for his pitch.

Braving the cold, I throw an arm and hand out from under the warm covers, toward the Venetian blind. It snaps and slaps up to reveal a medium grey sky, a monochrome without definition, no clue to its time. I can't tell if it is morning or evening. Who knows? Maybe I slept the day away. I'd like to ...
Stretching one's limits and pushing the personal envelope can be exhausting. Talking to people is hard. Recovery time is longer than I thought. For every hard-charging day, I need two to recover. What am I doing?! Morale is manic or depressive. It is either a day of brilliance and harmony or a day of soggy damp despair. Nothing in-between. An I going stone mad?

Oh I can relate completely. [Even if it is roller blind, not Venetian that he means; rollers snap, Venetians pull up.]



Venetian.



Roller.



Map of where to get them custom fitted in Nottinghamshire, UK.

I digress.

What Gordy Grundy is talking about is his idea that the Fellowship of Fortuna could become a movement. He wants backers, team-players, ground swell.

The basic principle, unifying theory as it were, is fortuity, otherwise known as the luck of the draw. He explains on the FoF website, "one thing that unites every human being is Chance. Sometimes good or sometimes bad, we all have Luck. While most call her Lady Luck, we know her as Fortuna. Every church needs as icon and the Roman Goddess is the inspiration for ours." As luck would have it, Fortuna looks a lot like Angelina Jolie. Now that's a goddess.



He's got a lot worked out: god, the meaning of life, how to keep your head above water — and product: artworks - posters - stencils.



Slogans and mantras too. The best might be: Better Than.

I want to leave everywhere I go, better than I found it.
I want to leave everyone I meet, better for the encounter.
Better Than is fortunato. It could even end wars.

Yes, it just might at that.

It's not a cult, it's a culture, he says. It may be a culture of one for now, but who wouldn't want to be called one of the Fortunates?



Buona fortuna Gordy Grundy, on your drive to get attention, funding, members, drinks, whatever. May the goddess be with you.