Art Poetica

Originally Posted Wednesday, November 27, 2013

If you read the comment section of yesterday's post, you know that somewhere out there in the vast internet ocean, there is a man who often doesn't like my photography.  He doesn't like the mask and finds the work itself slightly pornographic.  So it is reported, anyway.  Perhaps he is right.  Who can say?  It is certainly not up to me, the author of the works.  Everything, as Robert Frost said, must come to market.  I think of my images as Horatian satire, funny and critical, allowing me and the audience to both indulge and scoff at the same time.  It is like wearing a hipster hat or a pair of heavy black framed cat eye fuck you glasses with rhinestones.  You know. . . it is a critique that makes us cool. 

In Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," there is a scene where Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton are in the Spanish mountains fishing.  They begin to speak of Henry James in an ironic way.  It is funny only if you are familiar with James's life and works.  It is a subtle irony meant for "insiders" and is a part of Barnes' (and Hemingway's) developing code.  Soon, though, the ironies become more biting until Gorton makes a sarcastic comment about Barnes' wound (he has had his penis shot off during the war).  Then it isn't funny any more. 

That is the difference between Horatian and Juvenalian satire--one is gentle and subtle, the other is biting and over the top.  It is difficult to say something ironic.  Try it now.  Was it subtle or obvious?  We live in The Age of Sarcasm, I believe.  Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, FOX News, The Daily Show.  I think of it as the difference between The New Yorker and People magazine.  The New Yorker is an insider's game requiring a certain understanding of arts and culture.  People, on the other hand, requires less of that and draws a far larger market.  A trivial example would be the way that Stephen Colbert's schtick has changed as he has searched for a wider audience.  His ironies have become more obvious. 

I'm not saying my images are successful or even very good, or even that I am smart enough to perform my theory.  Obviously the market hasn't jumped to acclaim them.  There are some people who get a kick out of them, at least they say so from time to time though in truth they could be humoring me.  As you can tell, I have not been successful enough at whatever it is I think I am trying to do to not be effected by negative criticism.  I have been redundant, at first by design, and then by habit.  It is easy enough, of course, to suspect me of a devious lasciviousness, too.  What complex psychological issues are at play only God and Freud can know.  I think I am clean and healthy enough in mind and spirit, but I do not get to set the norming line on that.  In truth, though, I am desperate to find the energy and time to begin a new series, to start in a new direction.  Perhaps it would help if I changed my name and identity.  Maybe if I cut my hair differently and got a new wardrobe, wore a another costume.  Perhaps if I cut out the defensive ironies and pursued the thing in a literal, serious tone. . . .

I will, I will, I promise.  Soon.  Maybe.  We'll see.