Painting, and to a lesser extent, “image-making”, is the one act I do regularly that feels entirely apart and absurd compared to the doings and un-doings of each waking moment of my regular, paint-free life. In addition, painting is very often—but not always—an act I am more comfortable performing than any other. By comfortable, I mean that in the moment I am wrestling with what I see, or mindlessly acting upon those thoughts, I can achieve a sense of contentment. I am not wasting my time, all of this will contribute to something that lasts.
Invariably, that sense of contentment is wrong, because what I do won’t last forever, and it probably won’t last long. There are paintings I throw away, and beyond that, my work is a conservator’s nightmare. I haven’t sold the vast majority of the paintings I’ve made, therefore they hold little meaning or value to others, and they’ve earned nothing for me outside of the studio. So at this point, I should characterize myself as ambitious to believe that the paintings I make will even outlive me. Moreover, it would be typically romantic (and big-headed) for me to characterize the practice of painting unto itself as pleasurable to me, and therefore meaningful in general. But pleasure in the studio is not a given. Most of the work I do in there—especially the work I should be doing—is not a pleasure. It is perfectly difficult. There are a number of reasons it’s difficult, and together they’re the one reason it would be misleading to call painting a pleasurable act. There is rarely something I’d rather be doing though, and that’s why the qualification isn’t a complaint.
Paint is liquid color, and like anything so sensuous, wet or dry, it will always have a gratifying appeal. I needn’t argue that point. Paint’s place in the past is known and loathed by artists (especially) and non-artists alike. Paint’s place in the present and future has probably been written about elsewhere as part of overwrought theories meant to impress or ravage, but I’m only interested because it’s what I do, and what I plan to do. The relevance of paint (which even on the phrase’s face, is a heady subject) is interesting to me in the way that the future of telephony is a subject of interest to a pension holder at Sprint-Nextel. This may be an obvious observation, but it describes a far less obvious dilineation; for the most part, the people writing (and deciding) about what’s important in art aren’t the artists themselves.
It lasts.
There is a thread of intentionality that runs through everything I do. For me there is a spectrum on which all possible activities available to humans fall. On the one end you have the act which leaves a mark that will last forever, and on the other the utterly meaningless. And there you’ll see, if you’re sharp, that I’ve unfairly shaped the world in my image straightway, equating that which lacks longevity with that which also lacks meaning. It’s a markmaker’s equation; if it doesn’t last, it doesn’t matter. Aside from the obvious matters of personal preference, one could still rightly argue that there are plenty of activities that are temporal in nature and yet meaningful. I wouldn’t even disagree. My statement here is not about the way the world is, but about the way some people are wired, despite the world. The second part of the markmaker’s equation is a curious twist. The most appealing mark to leave behind is one that can be crafted to completion within the lifetime of its maker, in order that the utmost degree of control can be satisfied. Therefore the markmaker has a picky wish: to make something briefly, relative to the time it is meant to last, with a finality that will ensure its longevity. The act that goes on in perpetuity, creative or not, represents the opposite of the markmaker’s desire, as it requires the constant intercession of its participant.
All of us do things we enjoy, and any one of those activities may be something we acknowledge to be meaningless. Maybe we have a penchant for keeping inventory of who we’re following or unfollowing on various social networks, or perhaps we have an inner need to rate each song in our music “library” on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. Luddites love their gardens, which will eventually be sold or dead, if anything at all. But if we’re markmakers, in addition to these activities (and in some cases instead of them), we do something we believe will last. That something can last in physical space, past the point marked ahead of us by our own deaths, or it can be meant to last in minds and memory. The belief that the project we take on instead of our distractions will indeed last is an indication of the value we’ve given to that task. In fact, a great way to define distraction is to ask how long it will keep.
I think most artists, dealers, curators, and critics are aware of the fact that painting isn’t going anywhere soon (despite its recent death), even if they don’t understand why. But my concern is more with those members of society that in one sense are very aware of the trends taking place in our world, at every scale. They are atop the zeitgeist, they are the zeitgeist. They are designers, programmers, web developers, bloggers, authors, tastemakers, niche-stars, celebrity-politicians, activists, start-up CEOs, web-stars, web-groupies, and cool kids. In addition, there are all the people on the other side of the equation that is formed by the relationship these groups share, and if not now, they too will soon be just as aware of the tremendous ways in which our world is shifting. They are editors, publishers of newspapers and books, record label executives, museum directors, movie producers, radio producers, journalists, mainstream pop stars, mainstream executives, conservative politicians, and old people. Some of these people are painfully unaware of what’s taking place, and some of what’s taking place is because of that unawareness. These are of course broad generalizations; they’re also mostly true.
I’m acquainted with as many of the former as I am the latter, and in particular, with as many savvy web “geeks” as I am plain old-fashioned artists. The geeks are well aware of what’s coming and the artists don’t need to be, because what the geeks don’t know (and the artists don’t need to know) is that eventually, when all these transitions come to pass, aura will still matter. What’s lost on many of the trailblazers is the very definition of aura. For many, it’s so unfamiliar that they used a keyboard shortcut to look up the word before they could even read this sentence. Forget the OED.
Aura is what you would rather have than enhance. It is what you would choose to experience in one place, if seldom, rather than anywhere. It is that thing you can’t leave behind, even if what’s ahead seems “better.” As it has grown more rare, it has earned its own startling figure of speech; an object with aura, quite literally “has a presence” about it, in its “thereness.” It is your wife, rather than an e-mail from your wife. No, not the idea of your wife, but the smell and the surface of her shoulder. It is something that takes up physical space (and time), and is better for having done so. Not the memory, nor the analogy, but the sight and sense of present experience. It is a painting, rather than a painting with a bunch of faves and an open API. That is called a JPEG.
This painting, if you own it, will need to be properly hung on your wall. You may need a crate built for it in the case of travel or storage. You’ll want to consider the lighting. Photographs taken of it—even by professionals—will defy and frustrate what you see. You will call this painting beautiful and lovely and strange. You will stare at it for seconds at a time for years of your life, and eventually it will mean more to you than it ever did to its maker.
Not simply forgotten, but altogether unknown.
The benefits of the next can outweigh the quality of aura, in some cases, so I don’t intend to act as though the qualities of an object can invariably trump the future. Often times a symbiosis can be achieved between the original object and its stand-in that heightens the experience of both. In other instances, the next iteration is a suitable and necessary replacement, whatever traces of aura may be discarded. Newsprint has a charming scent, yes, but most of us are better off with a new kind of news. Likewise, fast and traveling readers are fortunate to no longer need books, but old books, beautiful books are something entirely different, despite their similar name. There is a spectrum, see?
And never did I stop to think this sort of knowledge was lost on my peers until lately. There is such a hunger for our evolution to move past those scared executive giants that have kept us from moving various media forward, that the judgement in those that are ready to be rid of objects is a bit unwieldy. They are ravenous for that slick utopia in which everything is interoperable. The confidence they share in their ability to think different may have blinded them from the ability to observe life. Rather than offend one of these sorts that I do not know, I’ll pick on a very good friend, who happens to be among the most talented people I know (currently, a revered designer):
“In 100 years, a printed magazine will be the cultural equivalent of an illuminated manuscript.”
Wilson Miner, via Twitter
I haven’t taken the time to read the rules, but I’m certain it’s unfair of me to take a man’s tweet to task in long-form. But in the spirit of the present, it’s also entirely appropriate. Besides, the tweet in question was clearly crafted with thought and judgement, meant to stir the mind. It may have even been the product of some two or three drafts. Anytime someone makes a public prediction for the future, he or she is wise to be careful and thoughtful with his or her words. This tweet has all the markings of just such a process.
Not unlike Wilson, I’m saying a few things about the way I see the distant future shaping up, based upon the present. (If I did my research, I imagine I would find that’s a silly thing to do.) But my greatest interest is in the culture and attitudes of the present.
Now the swashbuckling.
In 100 years, a printed magazine will be far less relevant or meaningful than Wilson surmised. An illuminated manuscript, after all, is an object that was long ago decorated individually by the artist’s hand. Though their aura and meaning are somewhat deadened and lost behind plexiglass that protects them behind furthur stifling museum and university walls, these objects are special. And as much as they may not appeal to our current taste, we easily recognize this upon inspection. The pages of printed magazines from 2009 will never gain this stature. Nostalgia may imbue them with some fleeting value as this generation and the next long for a previous time, but as individual objects, they’ll be throw-aways. They’ll find them in banker’s boxes and old dry closets. The cultural equivalent of arrowheads along a trail, charming for a instant, but just another thing to keep in a drawer. Like most things of course, magazines do tell their quality along a spectrum. I’m fond of the weights and surfaces of magazines such as Blind Spot and Danske, and can imagine that no matter the year, they’d command the attention of someone’s hands for a second or two longer than the frail junk that is Newsweek, Us Weekly, Wired, and Time. In the broad sense, each one will own a fragment of aura that even in the aggregate will mean very little. Magazines will not join Illuminated manuscripts behind the plexi. They will fall behind shelves. As objects (their content aside), they will be the gum beneath a desk, stirring the imagination of a peering child.
Wilson’s remark, in attitude, seems intended as a comment on a larger trend—the decentralization of objects. The big move. From vinyl music, spined books, and paper papers to their space-absent stand-ins. From objects to no thing. And more important to me than the exact place in history that illuminated manuscripts and printed magazines will hold is the nature of the attitude I detect behind that bold vision for what’s next. In short, by comparing printed magazines to illuminated manuscripts, Wilson has compared something without aura to something he knows about precisely for the aura it retains. What is unclear is whether or not he (and those that seem to share his dispassionate take on replaceable objects) believes magazines will have aura, or whether he has left aura out of the picture. In terms of the group-think at large, the latter is clearly taking place.
“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be…The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.”
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on the notion of the original and authenticity are universally known, and still relevant. Yet today the relevance of that essay is charged with the impending quality of what can only be described (dramatic as it may sound) as a new age, beyond the pale of mere reproduction. The invisible price tag that is attached to every extant object reads simply “Do I need to exist?” And as noted, there is an entire tribe of people more interested in forcing the answer to be “No,” rather than simply considering the question.
Of late, there has been a mainstream-level interest in this thing called the Cloud, in which increasingly, all of our data is elsewhere, stored safely, ready to be accessed not by a singular object, but by any object equipped with our identity. This emboldens the opinions of those who fail to understand aura, as they recognize their once-coveted computer as instantly replaceable. All that is needed to begin anew with email, documents, even an individual’s painfully particular “settings” and “preferences”—an entire digital life—is a password. More and more, this seems to encourage a sort of disregard for the object (in this case a computer), as a rugged supply to be expended and replenished, which it is.
In the case of the computer, a manufactured thing for which there may be scarcity for some models, but never one-of-a-kind, one is right to devalue it as personal data becomes ubiquitous. However in the meantime, there seems to be a growing belief that no object matters, beneath the surface of our ever-more seamless digital interactions. Records, books, computers, handshakes, hugs. These are all old-fashioned. The stand-in is being mistaken for progress. But it won’t be forever. We have bodies in a physical world, and so long as that is the case, our interactions in that world will render the most meaning. There is only one self, and I would argue that said self, despite the ease of an online go-between, can only be authentic in person. Great attention is being paid to the websites and services that deliver their product with authenticity, by using the language of conversation as part of their brand, but this strategy shouldn’t be confused for the real thing. It only refers to the authentic moments that can exist between two living people, in the same way that the photographic refers to reality.
It’s a matter of singularity. As the objects in our life that aren’t necessary disappear, the objects that remain—useful or not—will be those that cannot be replaced or disposed of. I imagine that over time our culture will also “regress,” in a sense, as we begin to realize there are certain experiences and interactions that must be had in the flesh. People will arrive at versions of their selves that are less obsessed by their possessions than previous generations, yet those increasingly few possessions will represent a culture that is unknowingly defined by a profound appreciation for aura. People won’t necessarily know why they choose to keep certain objects, or to know certain friends, treasured friends, on their patio rather than Facebook. Just a slightly uncanny feeling, “I couldn’t get rid of this.”
What then?
Now this no call to action. It is a call to thought, at the most. I have no grave concerns that our future will be an awful place if people don’t start understanding aura, what has it, and what doesn’t. By the very nature of aura, it will preserve the objects that need to be preserved. They’ll be put behind glass, and registrars will document their stillness on a weekly basis.
I’m not concerned about anything, in fact. Rather I just think that people ought to consider what is truly important, truly special, and truly valuable now. The future is up to forces we’re unaware of, but based upon the last several millenia, I have a strong hunch about what is and will continue to be meaningful.
In a world in which objects continue to give way to the ether, replaced by functions, services, and systems that we grow ever more inextricably tied to, our appreciation in the objects that remain will be with those that retain their use, even as objects. Even more (and as always), the greatest value will be assigned to those objects that never had a permanently agreed-upon use in the first place. That is chiefly the realm of art. And by the fact that even art mainstays such as sculptures, prints, photographs, videos, and “concepts” can be reproduced without end, there is perhaps no object on earth, aside from a hand-written letter, the individual human, and the earth itself that possesses the aura of a painting. An image for our image-based, image-obsessed culture, made entirely of individual marks. Each mark calling upon a moment in time. A living document of activity, pretty or not.
How’s that for self-important theatrics?
But that’s not how I mean it. I’m excited, that’s all. It’s such an incredibly interesting situation. And as we grow old, I expect aura to be among the long-term buzzwords of our time. During that time, I’ll be making paintings. I expect others have already made much of the dematerialization of things, and they will continue to. I’m more interested in paintings than the entire conversation. I didn’t choose to be a painter because paintings are what you keep, I’m not that calculative. I’m just supposed to make images, it’s something I need to do. But if I didn’t make images, I still think I would find painting to be the most interesting act in history (the Tweet, a distant second). It’s an incredibly relevant mystery. For many of us, paintings do something other things don’t that force us to revisit them. There is a reason they haunt us.