What Ever Has Happened to "Play"?

"Rubies Rider"  Artist Christine Alfery

"Mike The Mallard, Flash Gordon, and Jenny Dolls.  What has happened to the concept of "play?'"

I was in an antique shop recently, just meandering through the antiques that allowing them to stir up memories from my youth, from my family, from my foundations.  There was a 7” doll that caught my attention wearing a little green gingham dress.  I became convinced that that dolly used to be mine.  I had a doll just like it and a she had a dress just like that one.  I gave all my dolls away during my last move as no one in the family wanted to keep them so it was a wonderful to come across this treasure that I sure used to be mine. I purchased the doll and she now is on my memory shelf.  This shelf is currently with inspirations. Mike the Mallard a ladder climbing fireman resides there.  Flash Gordan in his rocket power flying machine that has wheels that work when you wind up a key, along with an old box of crayons, Dick and Jane readers, an old doll cradle and a glass piggy bank. My parents gave the bank to me so I would learn to save money, they encourage me to putting my tooth fairy dimes into it and told me I couldn’t get them out until the bank was full. I found a way. 

I came across another old memory, in that antique shop paper dolls.  I remember one Christmas, the only present for me under the tree was a paper doll which my father got free from the place where he worked.  It was a 3-D life size doll that my dad helped to assemble as he didn’t want me to cut off important tabs that helped hold the doll together.  I tended to do that with the clothing tabs on other paper doll books I had and he didn’t want me to ruin the doll.  Personally, when it came to paper dolls I could see no sense in spending all that time cutting out all those extra tabs on the paper clothing when you needed only the top ones to hold the clothes on to the paper doll and besides I changed them frequently.  Part of my restless child’s personality that appears to still be with me and which I cherish.  There were no pills to tame my personality in those days.  I am sincerely grateful for that.

These memories made me think back to other toys I played with.  My best 3^rd grade friend and I used to play jacks on her front porch all the time.  We found the little red ball that came with the jacks set was totally inadequate after a couple of months as it lost its bounce and we could never get the ball high enough to pick up all the jacks.  In searching for a new bouncy ball, we discovered golf balls worked great. Trouble was our dads wouldn’t let us use their good balls only their damaged one.  We found that these damaged balls bounced crookedly and made it hard to play jacks.  We discovered if we took the white plastic shell off the ball that the inner core made a perfect jacks balls and had a great bounce.  I rarely won in jacks with my friend Linda.  That was ok, she was my friend, a friend with a wonderful blonde ponytail.  It was the playing, the working out chaotic problems that happened with the toss of the jacks.  It was the struggle that I learned from, and that has been very valuable lesson for me even today.  To not become frustrated with the struggle. 

Linda taught me many important lessons.  She wouldn’t trade paper doll clothing with me if I had cut off all the tabs except the top ones.  I had a choice, trade or cut the way I wanted to cut out the dolls clothing. I chose to continue to cut the way I wanted to.

I have never been a good one to follow rules when it comes to choices I make that are my choices and effect only me.  I live with that fact and I want to live with the fact I made the choice, someone did not make it for me. So contrary to most thinking, when I said Linda taught me many lessons, my guess is that most of you reading this would have chosen to cut out the doll dresses the “correct” way like Linda wanted.  The lesson Linda taught me is that I had to live with my choices – and that I did have a choice.  And I knew no reason why I needed to be “normal” in this case. 

There are other choices I had to live with. In fourth grade we were to memorize the multiplication tables.  I could see no sense in memorizing them when I had this net little ruler with the tables on it and I told my teacher, Mrs. Brown, that if I knew my 2s and 5s I could figure everything out by adding or subtracting – forget memorizing a table.  Mrs. Brown was desperate towards the end of the year because I had not memorized the tables.  I remember sitting in the bathtub the last day of school before I was to head out really worrying about my choice, because Mrs. Brown told me that she would not pass me to 5^th grade if I did not memorize my tables.  I remember sitting at my desk afraid to open my report card to see if I could move on.  There was no social promotion back then.  To my delight Mrs. Brown must have decided that the way I chose to do the multiplication tables worked and I could move on.  Turns out my thinking about multiplication tables way back then is one of the ways to teach multiplication.  I was just ahead of my time.  And I had to live with my choice one way other another. 

These memories make me think about the concept of “play.” How children play today and what toys they play or do not play with.  How different it is today. No wonder children try to grow up too fast, have their noses into a computer, and can’t imagine “breaking the rules” and cutting off all the tabs of the paper doll clothing and discovering that perhaps that is ok. 

Playing today – really playing appears to be mindless. How do I understand mindless? One chooses not to think conceptually from abstractions, that is too hard many of the choices children used to be allowed to me have been taken away from them, like my dad helping me with putting the 3-D paper doll together for fear I would ruin it, or my friend Linda refusing to trade paper doll clothing with me if I continued to cut off all paper tabs that held the clothing on the paper doll except the top ones.  For me my childhood was filled with conceptual thinking from abstractions, my childhood and the toys I played with allowed me to make and live with personal choices I made.  I wasn’t asked to grow up too soon and solve problems beyond my ability. Adult Barbie dolls come to mind here. I solved problems at my own level, I cried when I made a choice that was in my personal interest, and I learned I was responsible for that choice and had to live with the consequences.

I have no trouble understanding why we as a culture are where we are, living with warring forces within our own culture, our own families. We continue to take personal responsibility away from the individual and try to place it within a collective and hope that we all get along and agree to disagree.  There is no room for those of us who want to cut all the tabs of the paper dolls clothing except the top ones.  There is no room for living with our own choices.  It seems everyone is encouraged to cut their paper dolls clothing the same way.  There seems to be less and less room for concepts coming from abstractions that can create new paths to roam.

Art and Aesthetics

"The Story"  (Also known as "Trip To The Beach")  Artist Christine Alfery

Art and Aesthetics

One of the definitions of aesthetics distributed on a video by the J. Paul Getty Museum was the “ah ha” moment.  In the video, there was a classroom instructor who had distributed his teaching materials for the day, which included a glass of water and a small amount of color.  The students were instructed to drop the color in the water and not to speak.  The camera zoomed around to the faces of the students as the color hit the water, the aww was visible on their faces, the fascination held their interest for a long time.  After a couple of minutes, the instructor stated that moment was the aesthetic moment in the arts. 

The aesthetic moment is about immediate pleasure and stimulation with the focus being on personal satisfaction, it is a focus on the self.   It is fleeting and not permanent. The aesthetic moment can never rest, it is always in motion and the self, the soul, the self tries to recall that pleasurable moment and sometimes fails to do so and struggle and suffering occur.  So the aesthetic in actuality also causes pain, struggle and suffering, because the self is constantly searching for that pleasure, that aesthetic moment of joy, love.  The aesthetic moment is only found in the moment, so one needs to repeat over and over the attempt to have that pleasurable moment but that never happens because the aesthetic moment is fleeting and not permanent, the aesthetic makes no commitments.  Many artists return to their drawing boards just to have that aesthetic moment repeated, and many of those same artists attest that it is often meet with failure.  As an artist, I have never been able to repeat what I have done, if I do the aesthetic moment for the most part was not there. 

This constant motion – the repetition is searching for a commitment from the aesthetic moment and this search for a commitment changes the nature of aesthetics, it becomes political, ethical linking the values of freedom associated with the aesthetic moment to the political, the ethical.  It can never be found because it is no longer about the self and the values that are good for the self the soul, but the values that are wonderful for the self, the soul are not necessarily those that are good for the collective and collective values. 

Many envy the artist and the artists constant quest for the pleasurable, the wonderful, bliss and they in turn argue for this bliss to maintain the arts as we move forward in time but because the aesthetic is not permanent, and the calls for an aesthetic commitment cannot sustain the concept of art and moves the need for values to enter the art arena.

The question becomes can the values of self, of pleasure, of wonder extend to the collective notion of art.  Presently if we look at the arts, and postmodern funk they seem to be in where everything is relative and nothing is concrete I would have to argue they cannot.  Art can never be anything, if it is everything to everyone.  I would argue they are not because there is no commitment with aesthetics, they are fleeting.  An ethical person moves away from this fleeting bliss, for the art for art’s sake, art for the pleasure of the self, and commits to sets of abstract ethical principles, something that is done for the sake of it is right to do, and wrong not to do.  The ethical person needs to be weary of the power struggles that exist within these ethics and not loose site of the self’s aesthetics and authenticity. This happens when politics enters the values arena and binaries become part of the discussion.  Suddenly the notion of the values of aesthetics that drive the notion of art is lost, the struggle is how to maintain aesthetics and the self or the soul gain the commitment of freedom, and pleasure that exists in the concept of aesthetics when working with the concept of art through the collective. 

I argue for and objective set of values to define the arts, one that a collective can recognize and agree to along with the subjective set of fleeting aesthetics that pleasures only the self.  Art cannot sustain itself only through aesthetics.

Authenticity in Art

"Tightrope"  Artist Christine Alfery

Artists stylize reality.  Artists take the metaphysical, something that can never be anything other than 

what it is, water is water, flowing water in a creek, trees, trees moving in the wind, sun rising, sun setting are all examples of the metaphysical.  Artists isolate what is important to them and they stress that importance in their work.  Their work is hand-made, their work if it is authentic, stresses the truths, the values the artist hold.  Art can be judged by the authenticity of the artist, the viewer recognizes this authenticity in the work and relates to it in one way or another, positively or negatively.

Artists who create work from a subjective state such as I feel, I wish, I believe, these mystical beliefs have nothing for their work to be judged on.  It is impossible, because it is an I feel state and is subjective

Should art be judged?  There is really no escape from making choices in art, and judging art, if we don’t make choices, if we don’t judge, we leave a blank check to those who wish to dominate art and make it what they want to make it.  The subjective state is an excellent example of this, how many times have you heard, when someone looks at a work of art, “art can be anything I see in it?”  The I in that quote is important as it is again subjective.  And it makes art nothing.  To not judge art is offensive and does not give credit to work that truly can be called “art.”

Make no mistake the illusion of freedom that goes along with “art can be anything I see in it”  is just that an illusion.  There is a sense of freedom because the work created came from the subjective mind of the artist and the viewer.   If the work remains in that state and never becomes a solid conceptual reality, then the work can never be called a work of art.  The concept of art cannot be stuck in subjective neutrality.  Art cannot be neutral, there is value in art, to abstain from judgement of a work of art is to encourage all things visual to be value neutral, and if it is value neutral then it is nothing at all.

What are some objective values that can define art – fairly?  True, feelings and senses are all a part of what art is, they are not all that art is.  The values I use to define a work as art and not visual design, display are: authenticity, uniqueness, originality, technical skills and truth be they representational or

Authenticity/uniqueness/originality. The artists perceptions, senses.  It originates from the artist.  It captures the artists sense of life, the artists, values, not the values of another, or of a group of another’s.  It does not simulate another’s ideas and call it their own because it had a different author/creator. The work stylizes reality. The style is the artists own and belongs to no other, the idea is the artists own, it belongs to no other.

For a work to be truthful it recognizes what has be identified, concepts have already been created, that acknowledge a reality.  The work cannot be all subjective mystical based on wishes and beliefs, it also needs to be objective based on ideas and concepts. The artist can no longer leave their thoughts at the sensational, perceptional level when they are creating, they need to develop their thoughts into concepts that relate and integrate with other concepts so they can be something and so others can come to know it also.  Artists and those who are art junkies need to bear the responsibility for how art is understood and known.  

Art Is A Sense Of Life.

"Release Me"  Artist Christine Alfery Acrylic on Canvas - 58x60

Art is a Sense Of Life.

Art and aesthetic must be guided by more than emotions and feeling.  Art must be guided by more than, it makes me happy, it makes me feel good.  I say this because if art is just subjective then it has no identity because it can be anything and everything.  For me when I am creating, the goals I attempt to achieve, and they don’t always happen, are to have my work have speak to, relate to my sense of life. Some of the unique, marks I create, that relate to my sense of life and my life experience include, bridges, ropes, ladders, wheels, flying critters, wings and hills as well as smooth and chaotic lines, monochromatic colors, and bold colors.

When I step back and look at a finished work I always ask myself, is this work a thing in itself, it is not the same as anything else. Is it unique because I created it, and it is my unique, original style and marks that speak about my sense of life that makes it one of a kind, unique and original? And at the same time does it speak, does it say the things I want it to say yet at the same time, is it independent of me and my experiences so it can speak to others and their sense of life?  If it does then I believe I have created “art.”

"All That Jazz"  Artist Christine Alfery

                Is reality nothing more than a narrative? A visual and or linguistic construction that can be controlled and that controls what we say and how we think?  I reality nothing more than words and images?  If reality is nothing more than a visual or linguistic construction than reality is a figment of what we imagine, what we create and what we produce. Reality is then governed, controlled, by and through words and images and how we think, how we know and how we live would then be governed by words and images. 

                If this is indeed the case, then those who create and produce are the ones who govern. And the question is no longer what is real but how is what we imagine to be real governed, how are we governed? Historians seem to agree that we are in the process of a change in how things are understood. The historical era of modernism is integrating into the post-modern or neo-modern. Today subjectivity dominates were all things are relative and no one thing, has more value than another. The glue that holds this relativism together seems to be socialism or social progress.  So it is no surprise that our subjective words and images, our notion of I, has melted into the social stickiness of how to govern, how to think, how to create change and movement towards a richer life and way of understanding and knowing things. 

Art is no stranger to this social relativism, where subjective relativism seems to reign. And if what is happening in art is any hint of what is to become our governing agent it will be the consensus of the subjective.

This way of governing destroys the subjective I.  It has destroyed art. Where uniqueness, independence, originality once was defined the subjective I, now uniqueness, independence and originality appear to be a rare occurrence in images and in words.  

We need to return to a notion of reality isn’t just words, images or anything we can imagine and create and then say it is so is so.   That would make reality filled with only wishful, hopeful, thinking and ways of knowing. Reality needs to be objective and to be objective it needs to have a materiality to it and not just wishful thinking and imagining. Thinking about reality in this manner would change how we think about the subjective I.  We need to see the subjective I as objective and complex, not just hopeful, but also sorrowful, not just sublime but also filled with chaos, there needs to be a struggle for the subjective I to exist and for an image to become works of “art.”

What would objective words and images in art, society and culture.  It would respect the I as a thing in itself, subjective, but it would not expect the subjective I to govern art, society or culture. Controlling art, society and culture should be based on a reality that is objective, not imagined and created out of wishful thinking.

How does that relate to my work which is filled with the imaginary is something I am struggling with? I do recognize though that there is more value to what I create if my fluid struggle is evident, and if an idea or concept emerges that inspires one to think differently about how things are governed and controlled.  Inspires one to think differently and is free to be able to do so.  It seems impossible that the subjective forms into a collective subjective, which is an oxymoron to say the least, but it has.

"Sunflower"  Artist Christine Alfery

A couple of weeks ago I stated that I was again thinking about "what is art?" Tough question and Hedy Mainmann reponded that art is like life. I ask is art really like life? She isn't the only person who has made that statement. It is a simple statement but the complexity of thought behind it has been discussed for many years. If art is life does it imitate life? Just the word imitate causes a problem for me. Without going into huge detail I will just say no imitation - if it is art it is a thing in itself. 

Several years ago I wrote a paper on Michel Foucaults statement "Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life." I agree our life can be an art object as Foucault suggests here - but I disagree than just any lamp, or house can be an art object - not just anything can be "art." Many things can imitate art but not many things can be "art." 

Kandinsky and Rhythm

"Figuring It Out"  Artist Christine Alfery Watercolor and Acrylic on Paper.

Wassily Kandinsky continued. How to Be an Artist, According to Wassily Kandinsky

For the past three posts I have been making comments on an ARTSY EDITORIAL BY RACHEL LEBOWITZ JUN 12TH, 2017 7:07 PM. This is post 4 on "How to Be an Artist, According to Wassily Kandinsky."

Lesson #4 Inject rhythm into your painting, like a musical score.

It makes sense that Kandinsky would link rhythm to his work. His lines and mark making are very gestural. And it makes sense that Kandinsky would say as he did in #1 that art expresses the inner world of the artist, and not artistic trends, and in #2 where he states that an artist should not paint things, but paint in abstract form. Kandinsky was an abstract expressionist. 

Again though I return to the concept of the abstraction. A materialist would conclude that the concept of the abstraction or abstract art is a frill, an indulgence unrelated to reason or to man’s life in this world. Could this be Kandinsky’s abstraction? The spiritualist would agree to the materialists concept of abstraction but would also go off into parts unknown and non material. Many say Kandinsky was not interested in this concept of abstraction. 

Kandinsky’s notion of abstraction and in turn abstract expressionionism, I believe is how he lived and how he searched for freedom. A freedom not linked to some mystical notion that could not be seen, but in a metaphysical notion of what could be imagined, and explored and intertwined with what is worldly. Abstract Expressionism was Kandinsky’s way of talking, expressing how he understood freedom. It was filled with rhythm, and movement and color and self. For Kandinsky his art was ties to his need to survive, not physically, but his need to survive in his consciousness, in his mind.

The mind is conceptual, it is a consciousness which integrates with philosophical values, like ethics, and freedom and choice. To inject rhythm into his work, like a musical score was to inject as Kandinsky stated his inner world and the conceptual conscious choice to integrate it with reality and to integrate it with his own happiness. That is how I understand Kandinsky, that is how I understand his work, and that is how Kandinsky has influenced so much of what I do.