Another Friday, another Foto.
This one was taken a couple of weeks ago in NYC. Well, actually, it's a composite of two shots that I took, to try to give the installation's whole effect.
The striking thing about the installation isn't the detail, it's the overall sentiment. And, it's not just the overall sentiment of this installation (which was in the courtyard of the prestigious Whitney Museum of Art on Madison Avenue), but the prevailing sentiment that often infuses work like this one.
It's angry.
Artists are often angry.
Creativity is frequently an outgrowth of outrage.
And that shouldn't be surprising.
Creativity requires emotion, passion. Placated, satisfied people most often go about their business...the business of being satisfied. Angry people want things to change, often by creating things that will spur others to change them.
(Of course, there's also that bit about "Free Beer" in there as well...but we'll just ignore that for the moment.)
And I realize that at almost 59 years of age, I'm still angry. I still want things to change. And I'm still trying to both be the change I want to see and to create ways for that change to come about.
We could be so much better...
The bit from Enter the Dragon popped into my head when I read this entry.
"I said emotional content. Not anger"
Perhaps "modern art" has a tendancy to be angry but I think the key is really emotion and passion, not anger. And even then, if I walk through an art museum, and not just a modern art museum, I'm not sure I'd describe all the art as passionate or even emotional.
Posted by: Jason Yip | June 23, 2006 at 06:52 PM
Yes, Jason, much of "modern art" is certainly driven by anger, and, I'd wager, a good deal of the other stuff we see in museums today as well. It's just that the anger was at things we can't see in the work because of the change of context, and the change in the method of expressing that anger. I'd bet Rembrandt was angry; Cezanne, Gauguin, Latrec and Picasso clearly were. Passion and anger, as Freud pointed out, have very similar origins.
Posted by: Tom Guarriello | June 26, 2006 at 09:06 AM