Art used to be about stuff. The role of art was once that of a sage, explaining what it was to be human, imparting wisdom, inspiring. Art and its movements were the province of rebels; an artist expressed him/herself by abiding by tradition but doing something new as well. It was violent and large. Since the advent of the current age, this past quarter-century, we’ve gradually lost that presence in art. It seems art today should be light-hearted and bold and play the role of a court jester, like Lear had with his Fool. We can't seem to handle big ideas, big statements anymore these days. Our consciousness of the world around us has shrunken to the size of the head of a pin. McLuhan said we live now in a Global Village; maybe that village needs a Town Crier, or maybe that village needs a Town Drunk. Maybe a bit of both. Haha - I find myself slipping into the old "Artist" modalities again. The art world has had enough with "booming voices from on high" as well as with drunkards and junkies. We need a slippered mensch. A good soul. A modest soul. Someone who could approach a subject playfully and gently -- however you put it these days, it should be put in a soft, small box. If we can’t have art and artists as they used to be, we should receive truth by some other means, such as from funny-people and the universe of cartoons. We need good bomb-defusers these days; we need tonics for the bile. More than anything, the age demands ticklers of funny-bones rather than slappers of faces!
