The Gutter Art Critic

Every year we are witness to a lowering of standards of American culture by corporate media. Since the time of Elvis Presley, the bar for who gets to become the next cultural icon has been lowered in order to accommodate the shrinking intellect of the American public, the nadir of which was supposedly reached in the late 80’s.  Not so, if the maniac corporatist con men have to say anything about it.  Robert Hughes might have had it right in the 90’s when he said that “Reagan educated the public down to his level. He left his country a little stupider in 1988 than it had been in 1980.” and yet he did not foresee the levels to which the upcoming generations would stoop in the near future.  A future in which hip hop is the only tool seemingly available and effective enough to educate our overly medicated and apathetic school children. It is only natural and logical that “artists” like Kanye West* should be looked up to as the heroes of an eviscerated and neutered cultural...

"The problem of American painting, had been the problem of subject matter. Painting kept getting entangled in the contradictions of America itself. We made portraits of ourselves when we had no idea who we were. We tried to find God in landscapes we were destroying as fast as we could paint them. We painted Indians as fast as we could kill them. And during the greatest technological jump in history, we painted ourselves as a bunch of fiddling rustics. By the time we became Social Realists, we knew that American themes were not going to lead to a great national art. Not only because the themes themselves were hopelessly duplicitous, but because the forms we used to embody them had become hopelessly obsolete. Against the consistent attack of Mondrian and Picasso, we had only an art of half truths, lacking all conviction. The best artists began to yield, rather than kick against the pricks. And it is exactly at this moment when we finally abandon the hopeless constraint to create a...

I want to focus on the lack of contemporary art galleries in Asheville. The fact of the matter is, there are just too many artists and not enough galleries in this town, especially galleries that show emerging and contemporary artists. With the closing of the Arts Council’s Front Gallery, the number is even less. To be an artist in Asheville is a strange paradox. On one hand we live in a beautiful area, deep in the mountains, with lots of place for inspiration, and lots of other artists to network with. On the other hand, it is sad to realize that the only places we can show are in coffee shops and hair salons. The small number of contemporary galleries don’t have enough space or time to show everyone, and the commercial galleries just don’t care to show anything that they think they won’t sell. It is a frustrating experience. Most commercial galleries in Asheville have resigned themselves to show art that is marketable; that means, highly polished, non-political, non-controvers...

Art today should strive to reject the aspects of Social Darwinism so inherent in our Western culture. As society gets further into crisis as a result of this deeply flawed worldview helped along recently by 30 years of Reaganomics, the time has come to reverse the effects of Social Darwinism which have resulted in deeper isolation and individualism, and replace it with the effects stemming from cooperation. This is and always was the only way by which human societies have developed. The idea of cooperation was deeply entrenched in the early civilization of ancient Egypt, which as a result remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years. Contrary to what we get taught in history classes all over the country from high school to college, ancient Egypt was for the majority of its existence relatively free of conflict and war. Its people exercised cooperation as a means for developing a high culture when most of the peoples on Earth were hunter-gatherers. It was not until much la...

All art is useless unless it operates out of a moral imperative. It seems as though that in the past few decades we have completely lost this essential quality of art and forgot what a true moral imperative really is. Instead artists have turned to creating art in response to current trends. Unfortunately, trends are by their nature short term and easily disposable, and as such, art created out of this imperative is itself disposable. As if this isn't bad enough, another set of artists continue to make art which is supposed to be shocking or "controversial", either by it's content or by the nature it gets created. Art created within this single mindset, to the exclusion of everything else, is at best art that should be overlooked, but is at worst a poison slowly killing our collective unconscious.

Nothing happens in a painting!