The cult of beauty

 

In this country we worship a cult of beauty.

Think it’s not true; just take a quick look at any magazine rack. The faces you see on the covers of all of those magazines are pretty faces, young faces, beautiful faces.

And there is nothing at all wrong with being young, pretty and beautiful, but they aren’t the only faces. And to focus on the one to the exclusion of the other is wrong.

As artists we have a responsibility to make our art about all things, young and old, smart and stupid, beautiful and ugly. And here I am not just talking about faces.

Do you do flowers? I’ll bet you do only flowers in full bloom, in bright sunlight on a cloudless day. Sure they are the prettiest ones and everyone likes to see them, but they aren’t the only blooming things in the garden. You gotta make room for the ugly too.

How many times have you heard, “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like.” And what they mean is they like beautiful stuff, colorful sunsets, polished cars, raindrops on a mirror. Anyone can see that stuff, but as artists we have to show something that doesn’t get seen all the time.

You know I have always suspected Staties don’t like Picasso not because he can’t paint, but because what he paints isn’t beautiful. That wasn’t always true. Take a look at his “Blue” period. He knew just as much about correctly drafting the human structure as Michelangelo, he just chose not to follow that path and the result was shocking, stunning, liberating and well, ugly.

Didja ever look at Guernica? It is so angular, so disjointed, so choppy, but then that is exactly what happens when a quiet, farming village gets bombed. There are men and animals scattered all about, squealing and praying and begging for death, it is ugly, just like Guernica.

Let’s take a less extreme example, Klee. Now you probably don’t recognize the name, most Staties don’t, but you’ve seen his work, Senecio Painting is the huge round multi-colored head that just sits there staring back at the viewer with those unblinking eyes.

It will halt you cold, it will make you think, it will take your breath, but it is ugly. It’s another Cubist image which jangles our Statie eyes.

See we were raised on Saturday Evening Post Norman Rockwell images of everyday life, where the turkey was brown, the men manly and the women Betty Crocker, well, except for Rosie.

Yes, the King of Common-place created one of the most iconic and yet out of character images of our time, Rosie the Riveter. Now don’t be confused, Rockwell’s Rosie is a hard-working gal with muscles, rosy cheeks, a bandanna and a sandwich and her rivet gun, she’s one tough broad and all Statie with a cause.

The Rosie most of us remember is not a Rockwell, but the “We Can Do It” Rosie made for Westinghouse by J. Howard Miller. Neither Rosie is particularly comely, but there was a war on.

And that seems to be the one extenuating circumstance we allow, it’s okay to be ugly if there’s a war on.

Okay, there are plenty of artists who make a cross for us all to bear, Robert Maplethorpe comes to mind and Andy Warhol with his soup cans and brightly colored repetitive images have caused no end of grief, but they do make their point. Art is everything. It does not come in one size fits all.

Like Maplethorpe, lord help the public figure who dares to defy convention. Even the film community has its flock of nay-sayers. The Fashion Police get their own show. I’m just glad no one gets to see me writing this blog. It ain’t pretty and it ain’t for public consumption!

So here we are back at the beginning, is art only for the young and beautiful or will we as artists dare to cover all of existence? There are things in nature and not-so-natural that become beautiful when looked at with a thoughtful eye. Surely they deserve space on our canvas.

Do you take time out to read? The reason I ask is one of my favorite authors, Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series has been made into a film starring Katherine Heigl. Katherine is a beautiful lady if you like them fresh out of grade school. But for the part of Stephanie Plum she is wrong, wrong, wrong. Stephanie, my Stephanie is a tall, curly-haired, Jersey-girl with a nasal voice and a great fashion sense. I’d have been all right with Joanne Kelly of Warehouse Thirteen or Amy Ackerman of Buffy, I could live with Malin Ackerman, who is about the right height and has the acting chops, but what I got was Katherine Heigl, who is too blonde, too short and doesn’t have curly hair. She is pretty, very, very pretty.

Will the film be a hit? I don’t think so. You see Janet Evanovich has nineteen Stephanie Plum books and a ton of fans and we KNOW what our Stephanie looks like. The last film to be this badly cast was The Avengers, (Twerps, Kenneth Brannagh as Steed and Martine McCutchen as Mrs. Peel), and you know what happened there. Oh, I guess you don’t. You probably stayed away like the thousands of Avenger fans and the film tanked.

Now I can’t make you chose to paint tin cans or rusty anchors, I can’t change your mind about what is a fit subject for your art, but I do want to ask, are you being seduced by the cult of beauty?

Only you can answer and that may just send you searching for another kind of subject.