Age of dis-content

It’s going to be a highfaloutin one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I remember a debate I had with a writer friend of mine years ago. It was her contention everything is art. Everything. Anything you can look at, anything you can see, is art. Following her logic, that would mean everything from dog droppings to curbside refrigerators to posters of IQ45 could be called art.

I however—and I know this will come as a shock— took a contrary position.

It was my view that art must not just create an emotion, but must have an artistic redemptive sensory value, a unique and individual aesthetic and expression that’s intentionally created.

The Artist blog, in part, has this to say about it:

“The dictionary definition of art says that it is “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects” (Merriam-Webster). Art is essential to society as it stimulates creativity, reflects culture, fosters empathy, provokes thought, and offers a medium for expression. It enhances society’s intellectual and emotional understanding of the world.

In other words, they agree with me. Being married and having worked in agencies I’m not used to that so I love it when it happens.

And speaking of agencies, that brings me to the point of this piece: content creators.

We’re in a day where everything you can post is considered content. But my argument would be the same as with art: if you define content simply by it being there, then yes. That would mean the idiot comments on Yahoo, Instagram photos of your breakfast and agencies posting their client logos five times a day on LinkedIn would be considered content. But if you, like me, feel content must be meaningful then everything is not content.

In my experience, agencies like to advocate for the idea that they're content creators extraordinaire, with their finger on the social pulse of their target consumer. How's Tide's agency doing with content creation? They have just 60K followers on IG. Kleenex has 31K. Genesis does a little better at 366K. Charmin does a little worse at just under 29K, although to be honest the pictures they'd need to post to get more followers are the ones no one wants to see.

Like "influencer" or "storyteller" before it (see what I think about the "storyteller" image here)—two titles also used recklessy and often at agencies—"content creator" is just another bullshit title anyone can claim anytime they post anything.

Is this post content? Maybe. Is it meaningful? Doubt it. Will it stir up any emotions? Probably. Just not the ones I want.

What Papa said

Who's up for a really passive aggressive blogpost? I knew you'd say that. Here we go.

I'm going to have to disagree with my pal Rich Siegel, wedding coordinator to the stars and proprietor of the infamous Round Seventeen blog. In one of his more recent posts, A Celebration of Birth, he makes a rather large, revealing statement near the end that sums up the difference between his approach to writing and mine.

I quote: "The thing is, I like to write."

The thing is, I do not.

Now, just so I don't sound ungrateful or unprofessional (and I may be too late already), let me clarify something right up front: I love writing for a living. You know, the kind that's creatively challenging, let's me dress like a fifteen-year old every day, surrounds me with wildly creative, funny people and pays the bills. When I say I don't like it, I'm talking more about the idea of sitting down to write as much as the actual act itself.

And of course, one man's essay is another man's agony. Rich likes it. I treat every assignment like I'm going to my execution.

I understand the best writers make it look easy. But by its nature, it's one of the most difficult of the arts.

In fact after juggling, crowd estimating and balloon animals, maybe the most difficult.

I suppose like most writers, if it came easier I'd enjoy it more. But that's Hemingway's point (I'm in no way comparing myself to Hemingway—my sentences are much longer). If you're going to reveal your true self in words, you have to be willing to go to the deepest, truest and most painful place.

I don't like going to those places. I prefer New York or Las Vegas.

If you've followed this blog for any amount of time—and really, you're never going to get those minutes back—then you know there are a few posts on here where, instead of going for the snarky laugh or easy shots, I've actually shined a light, dull though it may be, on my true self, my real life and my inner thoughts.

Not that anyone was asking for that. I know for a fact no one was paying for it.

The reason that kind of writing causes me nothing but anxiety and apprehension is because of this almost crippling fear I'll have nothing to say. In fact, a lot of people think I have over 900 posts to prove that.

My former office wife Janice MacLeod, who's written four maybe five books (who can keep count) including the fabulous Paris Letters, always told me two things. First, that venom was my best medium. I still don't believe that to be true, although that's just what someone whose best medium was venom would say. The other thing she said was just sit down, stare at the blank screen and eventually an idea for something to write about will come to me.

Again, 900 posts prove that may not always be the case.

My close, personal friend Cameron Young is always just completing or just starting a new screenplay. His enthusiasm for original ideas, story structure and writing is inspiring. Apparently not inspiring enough for me to put down the potato chips and the remote, stop bingeing Breaking Bad (again) and write a screenplay of my own. But, you know, inspiring nonetheless.

In spite of my unwavering resistance, all three of these talented, imaginative, disciplined writers are incorrigible encouragers, supporters and advocates of my writing. It is appreciated to a degree I'll never be fully able to express.

Certainly not in words.

I have another problem with opening up as a writer. And I say this with love—frankly, it's none of your business. As an only child, I've always felt the idea of sharing was just crazy talk. But I do recognize that sometimes it makes for good reading. So, you know, anything (almost) for my art.

What am I saying? That Hemingway was right. And if you think by reading my blog you somehow can glean the joy and sense of fulfillment from my words that writing brings me, I only have one thing to say.

You're reading the wrong blog.

Room with a view

Hotel room art has come a long way.

Not that long ago, you'd drag your travel weary self to your room, plop down on the hopefully bedbug free bed and look in front of you. There, bolted into the studs and secured to the wall—because apparently hotel art theft is a bigger problem than we know—would be a mass produced "painting" of the Thomas Kinkade variety. A landscape scene with two deer in the forest. Sailboats on a shimmering lake. A purple mountain's majesty range at dawn.

Generic. Expected. Predictable. Just like my high school girlfriend.

But the walls they are a changin'. From Super 8's to Four Seasons, hotel wall art has exploded into a mix of color and statement, both bold and challenging. Originally the idea was to create a calm, serene and idyllic feeling for the traveler who just wanted refuge from the big, bad outside world.

Today's traveler wants something more contemporary. Something that they actually see and enjoy, as oppose to something invisible and easy to ignore. Like my high school girlfriend.

Of course, wall art isn't the only thing that's changed in today's hospitality merchants. Towel art is suddenly all the rage as well. Like, for example, this totally non-creepy, not stuff of nightmare arrangement pictured here.

Soir Bleu

I've written here before about my love for Edward Hopper-esque paintings. But as Marvin Gaye would be the first to tell you, there ain't nothin' like the real thing.

There are so many Hopper portraits of lonely, isolated people unable to connect with themselves or anyone else, staring out windows or alone in a crowd at diners, it's hard to zone in on any one in particular (although for me, Nighthawks will always be the benchmark).

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn (SWIDT?) to these pictures, but I am.

Years ago the wife and I saw a Hopper exhibit at the Whitney in New York. It's one of the best exhibitions I've ever been to, and definitely my favorite (yes I look at other things besides comic book art).

Anyway, for some reason I was in a Hopper mood today, started going through his paintings and came across this one I'd forgotten about: Soir Bleu. Or as we say in English, Blue Night.

I don't know what to love about it first. The devastatingly sad and defeated clown (worked with him), as far from comical and funny as he could be. The far eastern lamps, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. The eclectic cast of characters dining with and around the clown, including the man behind the post who looks suspiciously like Vincent Van Gogh.

Here is one of my favorite descriptions of what Hopper is trying to convey:

Soir Bleu is a vivid and monumental work painted in 1914, almost four years after Hopper's last sojourn in Paris. Its grand scale is an indication of how strong an impression Parisian life had made on the young Hopper.

At home in his New York studio, he created this melancholy allegory from reminiscences partly literary, partly art historical, and certainly personal. The artificiality of Soir Bleu is inevitable and intentional.

Hopper, as dramatist, has assembled a cast of characters and traditional types that play out timeless roles of courtship, solicitation, and tragic self-isolation. One of these characters is described in a preliminary drawing with a note, the shadowy isolated figure of the procurer seated alone at left. Hopper has also included a classically attired clown in white, a military officer in formal uniform, a bearded intellectual in a beret, perhaps an artist, and a well-dressed bourgeois couple. Standing beyond the balustrade, as though presiding over this mixed company, is a haughty beauty in gaudy maquillage, her painted face demanding attention in the brilliant glow of oriental lanterns in the cool blue night.

In Soir Bleu, we witness Hopper's early attempt to create, rather than merely record, a sophisticated, anti-sentimental allegory of adult city life. Back in America many years later, he would stage the masterpiece Nighthawks (1942) with all the worldly reality he sought in Soir Bleu but was too young to make emotionally convincing. However, this major early painting gives a clear indication of Hopper's enormous ambition for his art.

Now I realize no one comes to this blog for a discussion about the meaning of art, its nuances or relevance to the current culture. In fact I'm not sure why anyone comes to this blog at all. My guess is it's a combination of typing errors and glitchy routers.

Nonetheless, occasionally I like to take a break from writing snarky posts, agency bashing and random rambling and appreciate the inspiring, creative genius of true masters like Hopper.

You might be concerned about the fact I'm attracted to paintings that leave me feeling melancholy, depressed and isolated. Don't be.

I work in advertising. I'm used to it.

What's the attraction

I've always been attracted to a certain theme in art and photography. More than just "That's a nice picture." or "Huh. Interesting." I'm talking about images that draw me in, make me feel something on a visceral level.

Images like this one my friend Ron posted on his Facebook page.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I gravitate mostly to either solitary figures, representations of loneliness or images of disparate people, together and at the same time isolated in their own thoughts like those in much of Edward Hopper's work, especially his classic, essential Nighthawks.

It probably says I need something as a counterpoint to all the happiness and joy I put out into the world. Either that or I need help. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Maybe I'm attracted to them because of the universality of the emotions. Aren't we all a stuffed teddy bear, cast out to the side of the road?

Okay. Maybe not.

The point is there seems to be more of a reality and truth to these images than ones where people are laughing, just a little too happy despite the reality of the world around them. Like the people who dance in commercials because their detergent gets the clothes brighter, or they're finally free of the constipation that's been plaguing them (hard to dance when you're constipated, so I hear).

Many of my friends find it an interesting contrast that I usually go for the joke at any cost, yet I'm a sucker for a sad image.

I would've been great in a Woody Allen film.

Case of the blues

I only own one real piece of art. You're looking at it. Well, you're kind of looking at it.

The original painting, the family seated at the table, is called The Aioli Dinner by George Rodrigue. But when he added Tiffany (his corgi who passed on only to be reincarnated as the Blue Dog) to the painting, it was retitled Eat, Drink and Forget The Blues.

Despite the fact there are several of these paintings around, each one is unique. Rodrigue created a limited number of direct image transfers from the original and mounted them on masonite. Then he repainted the entire work again over them, adding nuance and variance to the colors, contrast and shadings each time. In every one, Tiffany is in a slightly different position with subtle differences in her expression.

As you can see, on the one we own she's sitting more to the right, just in front of the older blonde man looking to the left at the head of the table. And in case you were wondering, yes that is the frame the picture came in (they can't all be adman black now can they?).

This picture of the picture was taken with my iPhone 3GS. I can't believe I'm still using that relic - I need a new one if for no other reason than the 8 megapixel camera. I'm going to wait for the iPhone 5 though since it's only six months away. And I know I'd hate myself for not having the bigger screen.

But I digress.

I fell in love with the Blue Dog a year before I actually bought it. The wife and I were visiting her family (don't get me started) in Carmel. As we were strolling the quaint blocks of the seaside town, looking for Mayor Clint Eastwood and seeing if we could find a restaurant open after 9PM, we found the Blue Dog Gallery.

Among all the Blue Dog paintings on display, I couldn't stop looking at the Aioli Dinner.

We spoke with the curator of the gallery, Wendy, who wound up years later being the next Mrs. Rodrigue and the subject of many of his paintings like this one to the left. (She also has a wonderful blog called Musing's of an Artist's Wife). I asked her how much it cost, and she told me. It's probably worth noting that at this point in my life, the only things hanging on my walls were my Springsteen posters. And the Blue Dog cost way more than those.

I told her we'd think about it. So we thought about it. For a year.

When we walked in a year later, two great things happened. One was that Wendy remembered us. The other was that George Rodrigue happened to be at the gallery. Wendy introduced us and we all talked for a bit.

Then the discussion turned from art to commerce. She broke the bad news to us as gently as she could: the price of the painting had doubled in the course of a year. But because she recalled how much we'd loved it and how badly we'd wanted it, she generously offered to split the difference between the prices.

Rodrigue also happened to be in a particularly good mood, so he threw in this Blue Dog lithograph.

He put it on the counter, picked up a silver marker, and started drawing on it (I particularly like the Groucho glasses). My wife went into a panic, leaning over to me saying, "He's ruining it!" To which I replied, "Are you serious? He's just made it even more valuable. Now it's really one of a kind."

He signed it and gave it to us.

I don't know if it's still there, but at the time the Blue Dog Gallery had a layaway plan called the Kennel Club. They held onto the painting until it was paid for. No minimum payments. No time limit. I was extremely diligent about sending a check up whenever I could spare it.

I couldn't wait to see it in my home.

I waited four years to see it in my home.

But that's not the point. The point is it's here and we love it. Just like my wife, I still feel the same way about it as when I first saw it (can you say "marriage points").

One thing I particularly love is how much it's appreciated (the painting and the wife). The other thing I love is just how damn happy it makes me.

Especially when I'm the one who's blue.