NO PEOPLE ALLOWED

Why is it all human life has been banned from public places?

You don’t believe it? Try placing a piece of art with people in it and see what happens.

It seems that professional people are happy to have people in their offices seeking their skills, doing their work, paying for services, but not on their walls.

Why is that?

People are the single most common creatures on the earth, at least in terms of other people. There are more insects, but they aren’t welcome at the dentist’s office either.

Why have offices banned people?

You can find landscapes and flowers, animals, both sea and air but nowhere do people get any play. And it’s not just the strange distorted people of modern art, it’s the classical folks from myth and history. Okay, so the Nude is probably not the best choice for a pediatrician’s office, but there are lots of examples of people paintings which are not nude and yet they aren’t invited in either.

Take a group of men sitting around a table. They aren’t doing anything anti-social, they’re not, smoking, drinking and there isn’t so much as a woman in sight. Why are they banned?

What about a giant portrait of a young woman with a picture-window smile? Surely that’s the right thing for a dentist’s office? Nope, you’re more likely to see sailing ships than a smile.

Is it just that we’ve become a nation so personally isolated we can’t share our space with an image of other people?

Sure, the floral painters and the landscape artists wonder what all the stink is about, they get their stuff up everywhere. So who cares?

It is a good thing Leonardo, Michelangelo, Picasso and Matisse didn’t agree they managed to get their people in all of the public buildings, some even in the church itself. Would we be awed by Rembrandt if he had painted pot plants instead of the dark and mysterious people he filled his canvas with, or what about the haunting portrait of Rembrandt as an old man. No flower could mirror that face.

Is it because today’s artists lack the skill and draftsmanship to render their people with the skill of artists past? Could the desire to be juried into shows have replaced the desire to tell stories about the people whose lives made the shows possible?

I don’t know, it’s a mystery, but I do know I’ll keep creating people pictures even if they don’t win shows or get hung in lawyer’s offices.