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The Artist’s Almanac
November 2008
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The future is a tricky place, son;
-The future doesn’t belong to us.
- His Grandmother’s advice to my friend, Enrique
Nine years ago we worked ourselves
into a major swivet over our computers. We were sure they go crazy
when their odometers turned over 2000. Millions of dollars were
spent on fees to consultants to prevent meltdown. As things turned
out, nothing happened, and the biggest losers were cemeteries that
had inventories of granite markers carefully pre-carved 19__ .
November is a time of nature
stripped bare – of far views, fogs, cold rain and shriven
reflection. We see the earth’s body, her bones, the veins of her
blue streams. Most of mankind’s time on earth has been spent in
nature, until the last century. Then science and technology
reduced her status to but one factor in an equation of which man
is the formulator. Most of us spend most of our time today
indoors. Nature is our servant and we make her bend to our will.
Our concern at the Millennium was
nine years early. Today a meltdown of world financial markets
threatens the very premise of capitalistic democracy, as our major
investment banks and insurance companies turn to government, and
even to foreign governments, to rescue them. Our largest domestic
auto manufacturers teeter on bankruptcy and a political upheaval
impends. We sue for peace with our sworn enemies and offer our
currency at no or low interest to all. Our world turns upside
down.
Yesterday was a glorious fall day
and I escaped my swiveting computer and the world news by playing
eighteen holes of golf, alone. With no audience, I hit most shots
well and replayed the ones I missed. A rollicking stream frolicked
down through the back nine, filing the air with the music of
falling water. On number twelve I clunked my second shot into the
pretty little pond at the foot of the recycled stream. The
hydrologist was bent over it, dosing it with chemicals necessary
to keep it free of algae, pollutants, fish and frogs. Later I
tried to capture nature with photos of the long fall shadows
undulating across the fairways. Beautiful, but boring. The mowers,
irrigation heads, greens rollers and all other machinery were all
out of sight and the electrically pumped stream shut down at
sundown to save power.
Threading the Needle – Bill Puryear,
Artist
Yet power over nature is power
still, and, like political power, is not always used for the good.
If good is the will of the powerful, as modern man asserts
contrary to the wisdom of Socrates, then whatever license he takes
with his slave, nature, is by definition good. But it is not
always beautiful. Art is the last judge of beauty and the last
refuge from tyranny.
Perhaps the rise of modern abstract
art in the last century is a manifestation of this belief of
modern man that he may recreate the world in his own image rather
than celebrate it as the image of God’s beauty. Much abstract art
seems to be an expression of the frustration and anxiety of the
artist as the center of the universe.
The Key – Jackson Pollock, Artist
Art in service of the state is
generally bad art, as in the Hitler or Stalinist eras. Yet art and
politics have always been intertwined, often in a love/hate
relationship. Who can forget Delacroix’s stirring images of the
French Revolution or Goya’s mocking court paintings, or the firing
squads.
Liberty Leading Her People – Eugene Delacroix, Artist
The Shootings of May 3rd - Francisco Goya, Artist
The finest classical Grecian Art
came at the decline and dissolution of Athenian Democracy. When
today we see the fragile flower of democracy crushed so many
places by those who really prefer tyranny, we recall the words of
our Founding Father, John Adams, that Democracy never lasts
long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never
a democracy that did not commit suicide.1
Nature and art are sure solace and
proofs against tyranny of the spirit. Now, this November, is a
time of white sycamores against dark woodlands and painting Mother
Nature in all her naked glory as she sheds her last garments. It
is a perfect time for turning to her and to art to restore our
perspective. Let’s hope, John, you are proven wrong just this
once. After all, none of us knows the future. It does not belong
to us. Only the present does.
Autumn Water – Bill Puryear, Artist
1. John Adams Letter, April 15,
1814
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