Artless Nowhereland

David Kettner, Bloodlust, 2018, graphite pencil & stickers on photocopy of child’s red & black marker drawing

Paris has streets named after Monet, Mondrian, Delacroix, Chagall, da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, VanGogh, Velázquez, Rubens, Veronese, Gauguin, Corot, Degas, Greuze and Michelangelo, etc. Notice how many of them are foreign. Washington, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles has no street named after any artist. The corner of W 84th and West End Avenue in NYC has a sign, “EDGAR ALLAN POE ST,” but it’s an afterthought, at best. If alive, there’s no chance Poe would receive a key to the city, as did serial rapist Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs.

In a society indifferent or even hostile to the arts, there were still hundreds of art schools sheltering thousands of aspiring artists. There’s no contradiction. There were enough parents who could afford to indulge their artsy black sheep, and kids without such support could borrow from banks.

When I enrolled at the University of the Arts in the early 80’s, tuition was around $5,000. That was bad enough. Before croaking last month, U of Arts was charging $51,130 a year! The Philly mainstay had been around since 1870. Even older, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will shut down next year. Founded in 1807, it’s the alma mater of William Glackens, John Sloane, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux and David Lynch. Thomas Anshutz and Thomas Eakins taught there.

With Biden brain dead, Trump shot and Uncle Sam pleasuring Israel every which way, the closure of America’s art schools hardly matters, but that, too, is a sign of a sinking ship. Now, young dreamers seeking the sublime can’t go into life wrecking debts to rent an escape from the world of strip malls, televised sports, asinine commercials and the crassest politics imaginable. Going to Philly for art school did open my mind.

As a high school student in Northern Virginia, I did drive to DC to spend hours at a time at the National Gallery, Hirshhorn, Freer and Phillips. Still, I was a suburban bumpkin. I showed watercolors at a bank and The Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria, the latter’s a showcase for old ladies, mostly. Suburbs aren’t towns or neighborhoods. I hung out at Springfield Mall. Sometimes, I drove to Tyson Corner.

Unlike those in Europe, Asia or Africa, American suburbs are blighted by special curses. With more land, they’re more spread out. Less ethnically homogeneous, they have, at best, weak social bonds that are constantly eroded by fresh transients. Due to frightful black crime, cities are mostly avoided, but that’s where jobs are, so we have generations of Americans of all colors marooned in numbing nowherelands. Stay off my lawn, asshole! Since artistic impulses couldn’t be snuffed out entirely, cultural refugees kept trickling into art schools and writing programs.

In Philly, I was finally grounded. Roaming all over, I discovered bookstores, diners, cheesesteak joints and bars. Wearing a thrift store blazer to look older, I could begin my residencies in McGlinchey’s, Dirty Frank’s and Bacchanal. On Sundays, the Philadelphia Museum of Art didn’t charge admission, so I went there often to study its fantastic DuChamp, Twombly and Johns, etc. Rubens’ Prometheus Bound I found too dramatic, even kitschy, and Renoir I decided was fluffy, feathery porn. Cezanne was just clunky, if not ugly. Max Beckmann I had discovered as a teen while visiting an aunt in St Louis, but the PMA didn’t have any. Sloan’s minor canvas, 3AM, became a personal favorite, as did Morton Schamberg’s God. In his portrait of actress Suzanne Santje, Eakins made her pink dress obscenely lurid, but the lady looks bored. Such is sex.

For just $200, a professor, Jerry Nichols, bought my canvas, Hi Cretin, Hello Cretin, How Are You Today, Cretin? Another, Stephen Berg, would pay $800 for an oil he placed over his fireplace, even though his wife, Millie, hated it. Berg’s buddy, Bill Kulik, also bought a painting from me for $800. Kulik is a noted translator of Max Jacob. I sold a few more and was reviewed several times in the 90’s by Ed Sozanski of the Inquirer. I wrote art criticism for Chicago’s New Art Examiner and was critic in residence at Art in General in NYC. I guest curated as show, Toys and Incense, for Moore College of Art. Thousands of others also achieved similarly trifling successes that, ultimately, amounted to nothing. Art dreams nearly always die in embarrassment or bitterness.

At the Bacchanal, I read poems to an audience before I was old enough to drink. The positive response I got did swell my head, but without such a boost, I might have been discouraged. There’s nothing more uncertain or foolish than to think you’re an artist. Most of my classmates, some quite talented, gave up soon after college. Even those who managed to establish a career fizzled out.

Among young Philly artists, Richard Harrod made brilliant installations. He’s now an art installer at the Institute of Contemporary Art, with no trace of his own work online. Moving to NYC, Sean Landers became an immediate sensation. There’s a headline in a prestigious journal, “Sean Sucks.” Landers even made the cover of Art Forum. His early output I’d characterize as wise and jokey pseudo juvenilia, what Beavis and Butthead would make if they were art inclined and had 30 more IQ points. An extremely rare survivor among us, Landers still sells art. His lifeless paintings of animals have trite sayings on street signs.

Western art has become increasingly farcical for a century, but good jokes don’t come easy. Even the great David Salle is showing considerable strain. I caught his retrospective in Naples, Italy. Mike Kelly committed suicide. Though heavily promoted Julian Schnabel is an insufferable bore, at least he hasn’t blighted so many landscapes like his fellow Jews, Richard Serra and Jonathan Borofsky. Can American art fags speak out against the Gaza genocide? Of course, I’m joking.

Katy Schimert’s mature work has lost its goofy charm, I must say, but she’s 61-years-old. Goofing around, we went to a Philly party with “Mr Dinh” and “Mrs Dinh” name tags. As the publisher of the Brooklyn Rail, Phong Bui is more art figure than artist. His paintings, drawings and installations betray neither vision nor conviction. The critic Meyer Shapiro nurtured Phong and even gave him a Goya etching. Sculpture major Barbara Verrochi teaches nude yoga. Four decades ago, Barbara had to pay rent to sleep in a Manhattan closet. It’s a borough for the super rich.

Spengler, “There is a city of Phidias, a city of Rembrandt, a city of Luther. These designations, and the mere names of Granada, Venice, and Nürnberg conjure up at once quite definite images, for all that the Culture produces in religion, art, and knowledge has been produced in such cities.” Though cities are incubators of culture, even cavemen made art, and the American Midwest has bred a bunch of “naive” artists such as Bill Traylor, Howard Finster and Henry Darger. Art school trained Chicago Imagists and Jim Lutes have productively tapped into this tradition.

Spengler, “The sentiment and public opinion of the peasant’s countryside—so far as it can be said to exist—is prescribed and guided by the print and speech of the city.” In our increasingly centralized hell, a handful of centers steer everyone’s life in even the most distant villages. Though regional culture is under seige everywhere, it hasn’t died out, however.

Consider the glorious case of the Australian painter, Kaylene Whiskey. You can’t be more remotely born than in Indulkana. With just 338 people in 2021, it’s 686 miles from the nearest city, Adelaide. Since she’s a creature of the 21st century, Whiskey is heavily influenced by pop culture, but in her deceptively complex paintings, it’s channeled with a charming, childlike wonder. Picasso, “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” If only we could see the world continually afresh.

Along with Vincent Namatjira and Tiger Yaltangki, Whiskey is relevant where she is. We should all be so lucky. Whiskey’s artless philosophy:

I’m really drawn to strong female performers like Dolly Parton and Tina Turner, and these ladies also have the best outfits and hairstyles, so I love painting them! I grew up listening to their music, so they’ve been a big part of my life. When I’m listening to their music while I’m painting, it is sort of like the singer is coming to life in the studio and performing just for me. I start thinking:  What if Dolly and Tina came to visit me in Indulkana? What would they do? What would they say?

Her biggest dream as of 2021 was to travel overseas one day.

Lastly, drawing as a discipline teaches you how perfect everything already is. If we had more respect for the structural integrity of any leaf, ear, egg or paper bag, we wouldn’t so easily laugh off genocides or mutilate even the genitals of children.

Sean Landers, I’m Falling (Red Deer), 2024, oil on linen

David Salle, Guys, 2022, oil and acrylic on linen

Daniel Clowes, from Art School Confidential, 1991

Kaylene Whiskey, Wonder-Kungka, 2021, acrylic on linen