The Gutter Art Critic

“History repeats itself” goes the old adage. For a long time we heard this saying paying not much attention to it, with the exception of a limited few. Maybe the time is now. Historian Neil Howe certainly thinks so. His breakthrough book “The Fourth Turning” outlines the idea that successive generations of people follow a certain seesaw pattern of high and low, from crisis to prosperity with a roughly 80 year span dividing the whole into 4 parts of 20 years, each corresponding to one generation. His analysis starts around the time of the founding of the United States and continues through the pattern of depression and war following prosperity and to another depression following yet another era of prosperity. Hence from crisis to crisis, the Revolutionary war gives way to the Civil War, which in turn goes through the Great Depression and World War 2, culminating in modern times with our current crisis. Unfortunately there is nothing new about this idea and I think that even Mr

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 dystopia as w

"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