PAINPANG.COM: DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

tell me a little about yourself

HOW NON ART

BECOMES ART

(1-4)

1. CHANGING CONTEXT CHANGES CONTENT.

( THE CONTEXT DETERMINES WHAT IS IMPORTANT,

I.E., WHAT TO PAY ATTENTION TO, NOT WHY.

CONTEXT WORKS ITS MAGIC INVISIBLY

AND UNCONSCIOUSLY.)

2. IDENTIFYING ART IS CONCEPTUAL ART.

(CONTENT TRANSFORMS THE CONTEXT BY EXPLAINING WHY

WHAT'S SUPPOSEDLY IMPORTANT & ATTENTION-WORTHY

IS NOT... AND WHAT REALLY IS. CONTENT TRANSFORMS

CONTEXT BY MAKING IT VISIBLE. CONTEXT BECOMES

CONTENT ONCE IT IS VISIBLE. CONTENT IS

CONSCIOUS AND VISIBLE.

CONTEXT IS NOT.)

3. TURNING ART INTO TEXT.

(...TURNING CONCRETE IMAGES OF THE GRAPHICALLY DEPICTABLE

INTO ABSTRACT IDEAS OF THE GRAPHICALLY UNDEPICTABLE.)

4. TURNING TEXT INTO ART.

(...TURNING ABSTRACT IDEAS OF THE GRAPHICALLY UNDEPICTABLE

INTO CONCRETE IMAGES OF THE GRAPHICALLY DEPICTABLE.)

the art of.. art theory

'READY-MADES'

HAVE ALWAYS BEEN

WITH US.

ACTING VS. NON ACTING:

How Non Acting Becomes Acting

reverence / irreverence at play

MARCEL DUCHAMP PLAYING CHESS

photo © Julian Wasser

BUT IS IT ART? ....... and other titles of books about art and art theory.

who cares what it is. tell me what's it worth. $—only context that matters.

"THE MODERNIST GRANDFATHER OF POST-MODERNISM."...Coined, heard, read, somewhere. "Marcel Duchamp is the father of the 'ready-mades' : mass-produced objects ready for use which, with a little inspired alteration, can be transformed into works of art. The most famous among those are: the big bottle-drier, the fountain urinal which he signed 'Mutt' and exhibited in New York in 1916, and the reproduction of the Mona Lisa, 'L.H.O.O.Q.' (1919), which he decorated with a becoming moustache." -- Dictionary of Modern Painting, 1956.

tell me what's it worth, i'll tell you what it is

DON'T COPY ME? Don't ask the impossible. The mind is a mirror as well as a hammer. An imperfect mirror bent and deformed by the blow of every painful truth and vicious lie. But no hammer shatters every mirror... without also annihilating every conscious life. No iconoclast can ban every poor imitation. No iconoclast can smash every image that detracts from his own sense of importance. No iconoclast can destroy every destracting image, every image worshiper, every idolater; without becoming a murderer; without becoming a mass murderer. The mind must mirror what the mind refects. And the mind that reflects cannot help but produce mirror images, imitations or copies of what it contemplates. To expand upon a quote by art critic Richard Huntington, all "inventive illusions are sweet little commentaries on the fascination that mimesis still holds for the eye and mind." The most inventive illusion being the idea that the mind can or needs to be free of mimesis.

RECOGNITION IS RE-PRESENTATION (OR REPRESENTATION). Far from destroying representational art, abstract art and abstract expressionism uncluttered the naked act of recognition. But they are still forms of recognition and re-presenting something through the act of re-cognition. Therefore, they are representational art. Yet, as purified forms of recognition, they succeed in unveiling the deeper mystery of recognition. For the eye can no longer afford to be lazy when nothing appears familiar. How is it possible to recognize something as being good or important or even interesting if you have never seen it before. Just what are you recognizing when familiar visual references do not exist. The stranger and more unfamiliar the visual territory the better. For the eye can take nothing for granted in this strange and unfamiliar territory. Gripped by feverish uncertainty and intense concentration, the lucky eye falls into a revery. While the unlucky eye closes.

PRE-FAB ART. Royalty free files are the designer's dirty little secret. Clip art. Stock photos. Ready-made templates. Anything in the Public Domain. It is all fair game for the designer trying to meet his client's deadline without having the time to 'start from scratch' and without the resources to pay others to quickly do (some or all of) the work for him. The most successful designers are often far more successful at landing clients than they are at designing. But is any of it art? Of course.

WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM? Creating images and text from preexisting images and text is intrinsic to the creative process. The images you create come from the world and from the imagination. And text is merely the rigorous abstraction and standardization of images in the form of words, symbols and concepts—the recombination of which creates more images. Beyond that, no one knows the ultimate origin of either the world or the imagination. And no one knows the ultimate origin of the images that appear to come from them. No one knows just what the world and the imagination is or comes from... ultimately.

CAUSE AND EFFECT. A. Every cause is or can be the effect of some other cause. B. If something can be an effect of something else, then good cause always exists for further searching.

No one knows the origin of consciousness or just what it is. And the ultimate origin and identity of matter is just as puzzling as the origin and identity of the mind. (If the Big Bang created the universe, what created the Big Bang? What went Bang? What came before it? The laws of physics break down at the exact moment or point of creation. Singularities like this defy the logic of mathematics because mathematics cannot really get a handle on anything infinite.) You and others may think you have traced something to its origin and now know when, where and how something came into being. But that is only because you do not know how to trace it even further... just now.

1. Just because it seems impossible to go any further does not mean there is nowhere further to go.

2. And just because something seems to come from nowhere does not mean it did not actually come from somewhere and, therefore, preexist... premade... in some form (or form of formlessness) elsewhere before showing up in your mind and hand.

3. And just because somthing may seem to have always existed does not mean it did not actually come from something else, from somewhere else, perhaps even coming from nowhere, from nothing, from nothingness, from something that seems impossible to name... just now.

In short, the origin of your mind and hand is as mysterious as the origin of whatever shows up there.

MONEY FOR NOTHING. There is a fine line between the crook or freeloader who tries to get something for nothing and the person who tries to earn it or legally purchase it with his own hard-earned money. For you might truly be surprised to learn how hard the life of a crook can be and how hard he may have to work for ill-gotten gain. Some crooks would be surprised too. And in the art world, that line all but disappears. For the artist is the king of making money out of nothing: making something out of nothing: something good: something valuable: making something desirable seem to appear out of thin air. The artist is king of entertainers —magician, trickster, entrepreneur extraordinaire. And the art world is queen of showplaces, arenas, marketplaces, business worlds. The art world is Her Majesty Of Getting Money For Nothing.

That is,... if you believe you can make something from nothing. If you do, then (getting) something for nothing is possible. If you believe you can turn something into nothing, then (giving) nothing for something is possible. If not, then no thing is given without getting. No thing is gotten without giving. For no thing is created or destroyed, only transformed.

But even transformation without beginning or end cannot stop the juggernaut of the mind's obsession with beginnings and ends, life and death, something and nothing. This juggernaut crushes every unbroken mind sheltered by transformations and appearances that seem to have no beginning and no end. Until rising from the ashes of what now seem to be timeless delusions and romantic illusions about timelessness, the broken mind chases after unbroken origins.

The true nature of origins—whether origins truly exist—is as mysterious as the mind that chases after it,... broken or not. Again, the nature and origin of your mind and hand is as mysterious as the nature and origin of whatever shows up there.

DICTUM. Questions of originality are better left to intellectual property rights lawyers to argue. These questions have no other meaning in the art world today.

It's a setup.

I was framed.

This is entrapment.

"Be sure to visit our rogues' gallery of pirates, gamblers, gamers, movie buffs and other ne'er-do-wells and the ever expanding universe of ready-mades."