Fast Art

I was still in what I call a fragmentary stage. I had a series of fragments. That’s not a good state to be in because you feel fragmented inside you. These are very emotional experiences. When you’re in that state you worry about whether you are going to be able to put the things together. So I began to make drawings and ideas for it. Then, I would find that they weren’t working and then I’d feel unhappiness about it. This took quite a few months. I sketched and drew and composed and nothing was coming of it. Finally, certain ideas began to clarify themselves for me.

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Even though the modern world is more awash in images than at any other time in history, in today’s world does any social context exist where single images that take months to produce are “consumed” by the public-at-large?

I don’t think so.

I think this is a fundamental difference between our culture and everything that has come before us in the hundreds of years of Western civilization.

Movies certainly take months or even years to produce. But the actual images we see are the result of cinematographers bargaining with directors or producers to get as many minutes as possible to set up a shot.

The most skilled artists today work in advertising but even the most expensive ad image is produced under time pressures similar to the movie business.

Computer games are created by teams of programmers, designers and artists, but like the film and ad industries, these people work under production schedules where they must create hundreds of images per month.

Comic book artists get paid by the page. If they let an image ‘work itself out’ for months then they do not get paid for months.

In fact, the only way a person can learn of and see images that artists labor over for months is by regularly reading an obscure magazine like “Art In America” and keeping track of what obscure gallery is showing which obscure artist’s work and then traveling to New York (usually) to view the creations.

As if fast food wasn’t bad enough, as if fast food wasn’t killing enough people foolish enough to eat it, we live in a global society where the only art available to the public-at-large is fast art.

And I suspect fast art is doing more damage to our minds and souls than fast food is doing to our bodies.

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